Stars
by Lethal Butterfly
Summary: The Nightmare Child  OC  stirs up the lives of Sora and the Keyblade wielders and encounters some complications. multi-crossover of Dr.Who, KH, Percy Jackson, Firefly, & others. summary sounds crazy, but give it a chance. T rating may be a bit naive.
1. Intro

**Author's note:**

**This is just an introduction chapter, so at points it may get a little boring, but the story will pick up eventually, so just bare with me for a while. Needless to say, I don't own any of the fandoms I cross reference, but hands off Noah, he's mine. In theory, you could get by without reading this chapter, but it really would help understanding later on in the story. Please review; this is my first official fanficiton. There won't be much of an organized plot, more like episodial, but I do have plans.**

Introduction: some background

Noah Grey was a rather unique person. As I'm sure you now know, there are many people out there with unique "abilities." After all, what news organization _hasn't _shown footage of Claire Bennett's death-jump from the Ferris wheel (minus the death part)? But Noah was special even among the specials. His father was a psycho (as well as psych-_ic_) serial killer, who ironically named him after the man who spent years hunting him down, Noah Bennett. Even more coincidentally, the father of Clair Bennett had a former colleague who happened to be Noah's mother, a sadistic psychopath with the power to sling lightning bolts. Noah is officially a 3rd generation hero; his father and grandfather both had the ability to understand exactly how something works by seeing it. But Noah is different, and that's how he survived. Had his father known of his existence and what he was capable of, surely he would want a peek (and perhaps a taste) of his brain, but as it happens, neither parent knew about Noah Grey.

Anyway, Noah's abilities. His power was the ability to warp the fabric of reality. More specifically, he could control both matter and energy. He could manipulate particles down to the subatomic level, and comprehend every little change in every single atom he's affecting, allowing for precision balance, letting him change himself and anything around him into anything, phase right through solid objects, and even teleport. As for energy, this is where Noah gets really powerful. His only possible weakness or obstacle could be a lack of energy, and even then there's always some form he could absorb. Even the frozen tundra of the Arctic Circle has _some_ particle vibrations he can absorb to make things even colder. He can't be burned, electrocuted, radiated, or even attacked with any kind of motion. All kinds of energy would only charge his batteries. Of course, he can also exert this energy in any form he chooses. As long as he has enough energy on hand, he can make heat, light, fire, electricity, sound, concussive sonic blasts, intensified gravity, radiation, and even use it in the form of psychic energy.

Psychic energy, you see, comes in two forms, telekinesis and telepathy. Telekinesis is the ability to move objects and affect matter around you without touching them, using your mind. As I said before, he could only do what he would have enough energy to do with his bare hands anyway (not being able to create new energy). However, telekinesis is much more efficient than muscles; for one thing it drains chemical energy from spread out, less intense over the entire body, instead of quickly depleting the energy of a single cluster of cells. And Telekinesis can be shaped any way the thinker chooses. It helps if you think about an apple. Imagine how much energy it would take to split an apple down the middle in a perfect straight line with only your bare hands. Now imagine you had a knife that was sharp enough to split hairs. The knife makes things easier right? Not because it adds its own energy, but because you can afford to spend less energy, re-directed to be more effective. It is noteworthy that telekinesis happened to be one of Sylar's (Noah's father) favorite abilities.

The other form of psychic energy, telepathy. This is basically the exertion of psychic energy to interact with the mind of another, and certain rules apply. For example, to enter someone's mind they may choose, if they are a well-trained psychic, to exert some of their own psychic energy to block your thoughts. However, their defenses can be overcome in two ways: One, simply smash them down by exerting more energy than the other is willing or able to fight against, and two, find clever tricky ways to get around, or get them to lower their defenses. Once a good psychic is in someone's mind, all kinds of things can be done; memory changes, erasing, locking, unlocking, blocking, planting. If you mess with someone's memory in the right way, you can change their entire way of thinking, their entire life. And memories are only the beginning. A good telepath can make people perceive any kind of Illusion they want to make up, they can even afford to be vague because of the fact that in illusions, like in dreams and sometimes real life, the brain will fill in whatever it expects to perceive. You can plant ideas in their heads that will grow and hold on to them like a parasite, make people think they thought of them on their own, and because of things like the placebo effect, mass trauma, and autosuggestion, you can control their bodies if you know how the mind works. And after about three hundred years of being a psychic, Noah knows exactly how the mind works, better than any psychologist out there. Of course, you can even get into other parts of their brain, and control their thoughts and bodies directly, like puppets. There's so much one can do if they are a good psychic, and good psychics really are rare, but Noah can defeat probably even the best telepath because of his massive experience in the psychic field. Don't get me wrong though; there are a few physics out there. Most humans have a small level of psychic ability, but they call it "intuition" or "gut instinct" and it's rarely accurate. But there are some, very rarely, that are just born with natural talent to read people, or bend spoons if they're lucky. Most psychics are advanced meditators, who spend years sharpening the skills of their mind.

Noah first discovered his powers when he was five years old. He got a cut, and he wanted more than anything for it to just push itself back together again like Play-Doh, and it did. From then on he realized he was special, and quickly found out that others secretly were too (mind reader!). By the time he was thirteen he had gained an unparalleled understanding of the workings of the universe by understanding his abilities, and that's when his whole life changed forever.

You see, at the edge of the universe itself a great, powerful, and ancient race was fighting in a war for the sake of all creation. The Time Lords fought against the Daleks to prevent them from exterminating every form of life in existence, past, present, and future. Anything from an advanced species consisting of floating orbs of psychic energy that constituted a consciousness, to the amoeba on the bottom of your shoe. The Time Lords summoned Noah into the Time War because he was so powerful, apparently not just human. According to them, every once in a few billion eons, someone with the power to warp the fabric of reality cropped up in some random species, on some random world, and when this happened they were called Space Lords, the yin to Time Lord-yang. The Time Lords had originally hoped to use Noah as a powerful weapon against the Daleks, but they fought back by enslaving a race of energy-vampires known as axons. Soon the water-beasts came into play, and the Could-have-been king with his army of Mean-wiles and Neverweres. The Skaro depredations, the hoard of travesties, the cult of Skaro, the paradox reapers. The war got so violent, the Time Lords created the time-lock to prevent it from devastating the rest of creation, and then Noah's only way out was to survive the war. During the many battles, he started to show a proclivity toward psychic illusions as his weapon of choice, and over time this earned him the epithet of "Nightmare Child." During the Battle of the Gates of Elysium, he actually intensified gravity around him so much, he became a black hole that swallowed a Dalek armada whole (in later years, the survivors recounted the ships as "falling into the massive jaws of the Nightmare Child). For years after that, he absorbed entire planets of energy and in the end, released it all in fire, becoming a massive star. One Time Lord took this opportunity to end the war forever, and made the ultimate sacrifice, sending both worlds, Gallifrey and Skaro alike, to be destroyed in the star, killing of his own race, but saving the rest of the universe from the endless fury of the Daleks. In the end, Noah and the Doctor were the only survivors, spare a TARDIS that the Doctor "borrowed" and another he saved from his home world. He gave the second time-machine spaceship to Noah, him being the only one left in the universe that knew how to fly one, with the hope that he would keep it alive. A TARDIS isn't just a ship, you see, it's a living thing, a living thing that needs to travel. A Time Lord and a TARDIS form something of a symbiotic relationship, like a clown fish and an anemone; neither can live without the other.

At the age of three-hundred and ten, Noah looked like a 16-year old boy, still sticking to the "child" in "nightmare child" he had icy blue eyes, short neat blond hair, a soft kind face, and always wore a long black coat that was wide and open near the bottom and had a high-collar, almost as if you could attach a hood somewhere. He was back on earth when he met his best friend, Nico DiAngelo, son of Hades. A modern-day demigod with power over spirits, ghosts, souls, darkness, earth, and wealth. Nico was still young when Noah offered to take him traveling, and together they used the TARDIS to travel across time and space, seeing the sights, helping people, relaxing on vacation, defeating horrible monsters, sucking the marrow out of life, saving civilizations, and doing an extraordinary amount of running (a bit of teleporting on Noah's part as well).

Somewhere in the thirty-first century, they met a young woman by the name of River Tam. _She_ was some anomaly, to call her a prodigy would be an insult. She was more than brilliant, more than gifted, more than talented; according to her brother, there was nothing that came more naturally to her than breathing did to anyone else. But every rose has its thorn. Her brilliant mind and psychic proclivity got her noticed by the government, a secret organization turning geniuses into weapons; their star pupil: River Tam. What they didn't expect was her brother to burn up his family fortune getting her out. Ever since then they had been on the run from those who wanted her back. But the thing was, they were "playing with her brain," trying to change her; in the end they broke her sanity. She's still a genius, just one that's a little bit crazy. "Borderline schizophrenia" as one of her so-called "doctors" once put it. Nico sometimes said it was like she stared into the crystal skull a bit too long, and couldn't help but think that she and Luna Lovegood would have been best friends if they had ever met. Of course, she and Noah got along brilliantly when they first met, and she was just the kind of person Noah loved to be around; brilliant, unique, free spirited, a little odd. So he asked her to come along with him and Nico. Traveling in the TARDIS, through time and space, all over the universe, being a mystery one day and a myth the next, River would have been untraceable; safe from what she called the "two by two hands o' blue." so she agreed to travel with them, which brings us to the end of the universe

Near the end of time, a surviving Dalek fleet was planning to use a void ship to conitnue their existence past the end of all things, and become the only life form in, well, whatever was left after the universe. Noah and his friends, of course, foiled the Dalek's plans and were now racing back to the TARDIS to get away.

_Bzzzzzzzzzzt!_ A thin beam of some kind of white energy struck Nico on the back, his skeleton was visible for a moment as his body glowed and he screamed, but then fell on his face, limp.

"THE ABOMANATION HAS BEEN EXTERMINATED!" declared his dalek assailant, which looked a lot like a bumpy salt shaker that had a plunger for one arm, a stretched out thin cake beater for another, and an eyestalk with blue light.

"Keep going! Open the door!" shouted Noah to River, at this he teleported, and appeared a few feet above Nico's body, as he whipped around in midair to face the Dalek, and at the same time made a throwing-motion with his arm as a brilliant blue streak of electricity connected between him and the Dalek. His cloak blew outward slightly before calming down as he landed on his feet, Nico's body right in front of him, and the Dalek exploded, revealing the charred remains of the slimy squid-oid inside the metal shell. Noah didn't waste a moment in picking up Nico's body and teleporting them both to the TARDIS, where River jammed the house key into the blue police phone box (Noah's TARDIS is a clone of the Doctor's, which got it's camouflage circuit stuck in 1950) , turned, and opened the door as the three of them entered. She quickly closed the door and Noah set Nico's dead body down on the small chair near the engine at the center of the bigger-on-the-inside room. He quickly started to operate all kinds of levers, knobs, buttons and almost every control one could imagine on the 360 dash board that circled the great green pillar-shaped engine in the center of the room.

"Did he _die?_" asked River when she saw Nico's body.

"yup." said Noah nonchalantly, as he continued frantically starting the TARDIS

"EMERGENCY! DALEK DESTRUCTION IMMINENT!" screamed a Dalek, with its raspy, rattly, mechanical voice. The Dalek emperor responded in a more fluent, but equally mechanical tone

"LOCK ON TO THE TARDIS BASECODE NUMERALS! FUSE THE TEMPORAL COORDINATE MATRIX! IF THE DALEKS ARE TO BE DESTROYED, SO MUST BE THE SAME FATE TO BEFALL THE NIGHTMARE CHILD!"

"I OBEY! CALCULATING TARDIS BASECODE NUMERALS!"

Nico suddenly sat bolt upright, opening his eyes wide and taking a huge gasp of air, finding himself in the TARDIS engine room.

"What happened!" he asked.

"You died," explained Noah, still busy and in a rush over flying the TARDIS. "No, NO NO NO NO!" he shouted.

"What's wrong!" asked Nico.

"It's the Daleks! They're hacking into the TARDIS!" Noah shouted, "and you could have just told us you had an immunity to death!" he added.

"Well, I wasn't even sure of it myself! My sister was able to die, wasn't she? And how can they be hacking us? I thought you said the assembled armies of Genghis Khan couldn't get through those doors!"

"Nico, the Dalek is a genius, and a single one could take out the entire armies of Genghis Khan without breaking a sweat, besides they're experts on TARDIS fighting from the Time War! And your sister didn't know about her powers. If she had known she was a Hades-child, she probably would have lived." a swelling and receding _wooosh, wooooooosh_ noise sounded as the TARDIS engine started to pick up and Noah typed frantically on the keyboard attached to the dashboard while looking up at the blue screen, which was displaying all kinds of odd symbols, lines, and circles, apparently reading them. But even Nico could tell something was wrong as huge showers of yellow sparks shot from the translucent green engine.

"NO! They've permanently fused the temporal coordinates! We can only travel between the end of the universe and the last place and time we were!" shouted Noah

"Well, can't you do something!"

"I!...well if I could!... if I only had!...AARRGHH!" Noah shouted in despair as he realized there was nothing he could do.

"Ahem,..." River cleared her throat. The two boys looked to her and saw her holding up a gray metal panel with slightly curved edges and convoluted circuitry on the side facing her.

"OH! RIVER! You're a genius!" shouted Noah as he took the large panel and started to plug it into the TARDIS.

"What? The space surfboard thingy? What are we gonna do with that!"

"I can use the tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator to override the TARDIS mainframe controls! Give us a little boost!" Noah declared excitedly. At this he continued pressing buttons, turning knobs, levers, valves, steering wheel, toggle switches, hit the engine with a large rubber mallet twice, incorporated multiple appendages to maintain various controls at once and finally, the whirring of the engine stopped, the entire room jolted signifying that they had landed at their next destination. He finally took a step back and a sigh of relief. Flying the TARDIS always seemed to be an insane circus act for him. Nico looked to the closed doors on one side of the room, knowing outside lay their next adventure.

"You brought us _here?_" said River, looking at the Time Lord writing on the screen.

"How can you have possibly read that?" asked Noah. "That's one of the most complex and advanced languages in the universe, and you just learned it in-"

"Seven point eight four two seconds." finished River. She _was_ good.

"So, where are we?" asked Nico excitedly. Noah didn't seem to share his excitement.

"End of the line," he stated plainly. This piqued Nico's interest, wondering what that could mean. "No place like it," he added. Nico turned around and opened the phone-box wooden doors of the spaceship and stepped out and looked around, his smile fading when he realized where they were.

"Home?" he asked.


	2. One last adventure begins

Chapter one: One last adventure

Noah was suspended high by some pulley system, working on some kind of circuitry near the top of the TARDIS, while River was below the metal grate floor, working with a blow torch and wearing rather ridiculous round protective goggles. Meanwhile, Nico was leaning on the outside of the TARDIS, on the inside of Noah's house. Nico had only actually seen Noah's house once, on their way to planet Wimenwept, Noah had wanted to run in and grab his ice skates, and that was it.

"So, where is your home anyway?" Nico asked. Noah replied from inside the TARDIS.

"Twilight Town, lovely little place just outside of Seattle. Great sunsets." He said simply.

"Why did you bring us here? I mean, one adventure left and we just go home? What's up with that?" asked Nico.

"Nico, when I took you away, I promised your friends I'd always be able to bring you home. I'm not sure if the TARDIS will ever time-travel again, but at least I got you home." Noah responded. "Besides, your dad would have killed me if you ended up stranded on some moon with the two of us."

"My dad isn't that bad," said Nico, as if the lord of the Dead were just any other dad.

"True, but Hades has never really liked that you've been traveling with me, he's kind of hated me since the time war."

"The gods were in the time war?" Nico asked, surprised. Noah almost never mentioned the Time War, except for one time when the two of them happened to cross paths with the Doctor in ancient Rome. Before you ask, that fire had nothing to do with Noah, well maybe a little.

"Long story. Lots of people were in the Time War, Hades killed me a few times, and ever since then he's held something of a grudge. He feels cheated. Especially after I didn't fall for his 'congratulations for cheating death now you get a prize' act. River, pass me the hydro-dynamic hyper-sonic waveform photon oscillator, will you?" Nico poked his head into the TARDIS to see river toss an odd looking device up to Noah. This time Nico stayed in the ship, now leaning up against one of the inside walls.

"So how long have you known I couldn't die?" He asked.

"Since we rescued you from Aanthoni." Nico shuddered, remembering the time Aanthoni had tortured him to try and get Noah. According to Noah, Aanthoni was another Space Lord that was born during the time war, he seemed to have something of a sadistic personal vendetta against Noah.

"Aanthoni could have subjected you to a lot worse, I know because you're still mentally sound. Meaning he probably tried killing you. And if he tried, he succeeded. I still won't ask exactly what he did to you, but if you ever feel you can talk about it-" Noah was cut off.

"He killed me after taunting me in a battle I couldn't win. When I came back to life, that was the first time I had ever done it, he was curious, and spent the rest of the time trying to kill me in different ways. Bullet to the brain, bleeding to death, poison, guillotine. Then you guys came, and after you rescued me you offered to wipe my memory, and the rest is history." Nico said, clearly not as disturbed as Noah would have thought.

"You know, that mind-wipe is still on the table if you're interested." Noah offered.

"It's really fine, I'm not scared for life or anything," Said Nico.

"That's what bothers me."

"They didn't lie down…" said River, who was now back on the floor of the TARDIS. "The rest lied down, but for him it was worth it. For him it was enough, the ones that didn't lie down. But you didn't lie down. I won't watch. DON'T MAKE ME WATCH! NO! NO! NO! BURNING INSIDE WITH VIOLENT ANGER, THEY SCREAM AND SCREAM AND SCREAM AND NOBODY HEARS! GO AWAY! GET AWAY FROM ME!" like most of River's outbursts, Nico had no clue what she was talking about, but still, River had a horrified look on her face as she screamed at Nico. Noah teleported down to stand in front of her.

"River! It's okay, it's okay," He soothed, putting his hands on the side of her head, trying to get her to sit down, "Nico isn't going to become a reaver, I promise. Just calm down and everything will be alright. Okay? Good, that's it." Rivers heavy breathing slowed as Noah, perhaps with the help of a little telepathy, calmed her down.

"What's she going on about?" Asked Nico, used to River's small schizophrenic episodes.

"Among other things, I think she thinks Aanthoni was trying to turn you into a reaver, but I checked your mind thoroughly, he didn't implant any kind of psychic messages. There was one dormant one, but I couldn't find out what was supposed to trigger it or even what it's supposed to do. I decided not to take it out at the time 'cause I figured he probably just left a useless junk-thought in your mind hoping I'd try to remove it and set of some kind of psychic booby-trap." Nico had no clue what most of this meant, so he changed the subject.

"Do you think you'll ever be able to get this thing up and running again?" Nico asked, Noah looked around.

"I don't think so, but still. There was a lot going on in our world when we left it. There's still one more adventure left here for us. Come on, I'll introduce you to an old friend of mine."

A few hours later the trio was ascending a staircase leading to the top of the Twilight Town clock tower. At the top, as they rounded the corner onto the ledge facing the west horizon, there was a girl sitting there with her feet over the edge. Nico looked down and saw that this was the same side the clock face was on, with the big open area in front of the clock tower right in front of them, miles down. Nico shuddered.

"You're afraid of heights?" River asked.

"The god of the sky doesn't think I should exist, he's out to get me, It's justified."

Nico looked at the girl, she seemed to exude shyness, she had wavy blonde, (white blonde like Noah, not yellow-blonde) hair down just past her shoulders. She wore a simple white dress, a _very_ simple white dress. It came down to about her knees and had no sleeves; she was wearing simple blue sandals, and busily drawing with colored pencils in a large sketch pad.

"Naminé, have you called them yet?" Noah asked her.

"Yes," Naminé answered quietly. "I'm working on drawing memories of the three of you, so we can save time on introductions," still quietly. River poked her head over Naminé's shoulder to peek at her drawing.

"Speaking of introductions,…" said Nico

"Oh, yes. Nico, this is Naminé. She used to be a Nobody, but because her past life is one of the few people in the universe to get her heart back, she can feel emotions now. She's also a precog, she can draw the future. And she can control memories of people connected to Sora."

"Well who's Sora?" suddenly a wave of memories rushed into Nico's head, filling him in on the complicated storyline of Sora's life as the true Keyblade master of the prophecy. Nico looked at Noah, expecting this to be the result of Noah using telepathy to save time, but instead he gestured to Naminé, indicating that the memories were her doing.

"Sora is the subject of our next adventure before settling down. It was foretold that he would bring new life to those who have been lost. It was previously thought that Naminé and Roxas were among them, but apparently not. It's my job to guide Sora through the journey of restoring old Keyblade Wielders," Noah explained.

"Why you?"

"Because I'm the only one who knows enough about the complete story, other than Naminé, to know how to revive everyone," Noah Answered.

At this time, two new boys arrived at the same time, rounding the corner to sit down on top of the clock tower. Nico recognized them from his new memories as Sora and Roxas. They both looked about fifteen or sixteen years old, both had very odd hair. Sora's was big, brown, and messy, but in an organized way, not quite a Mohawk or an Afro, but something in between almost. It was combed out in all directions, almost like an emo-type look. Roxas's hair wasn't much different, spiked upward, with a few locks off in other directions, and yellow-blonde as opposed to that of Noah and Naminé They looked a lot like each other but still were easy to tell apart and they both had Blue eyes. Sora was the first to speak upon arrival.

"Hey, Naminé, good to see you again. You said Noah wanted to talk to us?" he asked, almost like he already knew Noah (which, in a sense, he did).

"Yes, but we should wait for everyone else to get here. Hello, my names' Noah. You two must be Sora and Roxas." Noah Introduced himself.

"Actually, there is something you probably should know," said Roxas, but he was cut off by Riku's arrival. There was another round of polite greetings. Riku seemed older than Sora and Roxas, but only by a year at most. He had blue eyes and long straight silver hair. Nico thought it was odd that a teenager had grey hair already, but he didn't question.

"So what's this all about?" asked Riku.

"You'll see." Said Naminé quietly, still drawing in her sketchbook. A few moments later Kairi showed up and sat down alongside the others. Noah stood up and began to speak, pacing back and forth across the upraised ledge.

"Good, Now that you're all here, you're probably wondering why I've gathered you all here today," he said, Mimicking a British accent.

"No," Interrupted River, "but I wanna hear you say it anyway." A small smile flashed across Noah's face.

"You're here because you're all important to the revival of the last remaining keyblade wielders, especially you, Sora. As I'm sure you know there are a lot of prophecies surrounding you. For example, one legend says that the keyblade's wielder saved the world, another says he wrought chaos and ruin upon it. Another legend says that you're supposed to revive the Keyblade wielders that didn't die, but were lost from the realm of light in some way or another. Obviously, Roxas and Naminé were restored when you opened the door to kingdom hearts and let the worlds converge again, but I'm a little unclear on how they could simply be integrated into society, anyone care to explain?"

"Well, this isn't completely related but—"Roxas started, but again was interrupted by the matter at hand.

"Well, it's weird, we all ended up with two sets of memories for the same time period," explained Sora. "Like, I remember going on all my adventures, and meeting people, and being gone for three years, but I also remember other stuff; like going to school for that time, and knowing Roxas since I was young, we were friends since we were ten years old in these new memories, and he always had a regular family, and so did Naminé, it's kinda weird, but everything from the other set of memories seems to be true."

"Yeah, on the topic of multiple memory sets—" Roxas tried again to say what was on his mind.

"That happens sometimes. Instead of a choice making one reality into two something shocks to worlds into one" explained River. "History had to be rewritten when everybody got their heart back, and it was, but history doesn't like changing things it doesn't have to if it can help it."

"Thank you, River, for bringing me to that. Kingdom Hearts couldn't completely restore everybody, as for the rest of the lost ones there are four altogether. Are any of you familiar with the phenomenon known as Birth by Sleep?" Noah was still pacing, he got blank stares from his audience. "Birth by Sleep is something Diz came up with, or rather, Ansem the wise. Birth by sleep is the phenomenon in which a heart presumably lost from the realms of light without dying, can be reawakened from its dormant state. Sort of like a second chance, like when Sora used the heartblade to save Kairi, or when Kairi, in turn, restored Sora from the form of a heartless. Sora, for some reason they're waiting for you. I know how to restore them all, but I'm going to need your help. As for their stories, the people we're trying to bring back are named Terra, Aqua, and Ventus.

"Did you just say—" Roxas began to speak, but Riku shot a glare at him, a glare that said something along the lines of "_Don't you know it's impolite to interrupt someone? Even a Nobody should know that!"_ Not noticing the subtle digression, Noah continued.

"All of this happened when you all were still little kids, before you knew anything about keyblades, or heartless, or nobodies, or unversed. Anyway,Terra's body was stolen by Xheanort, who wanted a younger one, but Terra's body put up a fight. After Xheanort took the physical body for himself, Terra's lingering sentiment was preserved in his empty armor. Oh, a lingering sentiment is sort of like a nobody, but not quite. It mainly consists of,… sort of like a footprint of old memories and emotions. You have to have a strong consciousness to leave one behind. It's rather like a data ghost, not really the original, not really conscious, just a degrading pattern of psychic energy. And the more psychic energy it uses to think, the more it forgets who it is, the more confused it gets. But, if something can be remembered, then it _can_ come back. I learned that from an old friend of mine. Anyway, Terra's lingering sentiment tried to fight back for its body, and it defeated Terranort, but used up too much energy. To this day, the sentiment still kneels on terra's keyblade in a world called the Keybade Graveyard. Sora, I think you fought it once. If I'm not mistaken, it mistook you for Ventus at first, but then thought you were Xheanort?"

"Yeah, I tried talking to it after it kneeled down again, but the only thing it could say was 'I have nothing left for you. All I have left is my hatred for Xheanort' what does that mean?"

"It means what it sounds like, the pattern is degrading, probably at the minimal level now, wouldn't be able to tell Ventus from Xheanort at this point. There's more though, you see Ventus had a counterpart, Vanitas. Ventus used to be apprenticed under master Xheanort, who was planning to use _him_ for the new body, but when Ventus wouldn't embrace the darkness, Xheanort ripped it out of him with his heartblade. You see, Xheanort's plan was in two parts, the body, and the χ-Blade. The χ-Blade is a powerful, not to mention forbidden, Keyblade of Heart. The only way to forge it is for two hearts of equal strength, one of pure darkness and one of pure light, to clash. If that were to happen, the χ-Blade, oh, it's annotated with the Greek letter Chi, which looks like the letter X, so it's actually pronounced Key-Blade, but spelled with an X, as in Xheanort, or Xemnas, or XIII, anyway, It's said that the χ-Blade can unlock the door to Kingdom Hearts itself, in such a way that would re-create the keyblade war and inevitably end in an apocalypse. Anyway, every heart has darkness in it, even yours, Sora. Now, Vanitas could survive as pure darkness in the form of an intelligent heartless, but Ventus wouldn't be able to live without that part of his heart. He was dying, and Xheanort, who still had a little good in him, figured it would be better for Ventus to die in peace, so he brought him to his own childhood home, destiny islands."

"WAIT! You mean Xheanort used to _live_ on our island!" Exclaimed Sora, aghast.

"Long before you were born. You were a toddler when he came back in the middle of the night with Ventus. But then something very strange happened, Ventus's dormant heart merged with someone else's out of necessity for survival. This other heart offered itself to be sort of like one and a half hearts together to keep Ventus alive until he could reclaim his darkness and be independent again. The heart he merged with, it was yours Sora. That's why as Vanitas grew stronger and forged an identity, he developed a face that looks just like yours, the details of your features were seeping through the connection in Ventus and expressing themselves in Vanitas's features, except his hair was black and, like all heartless or people close to the darkness, he had yellow eyes. In the end, when he came to the Keyblade Graveyard, he ended up battling Vanitas anyway to protect Terra and Aqua, but when he defeated Vanitas, it turns out that was the plan all along, when Vanitas's body was about to perish, it had no choice but to become part of Ventus again. The forging of the χ-Blade was completed, and the explosion created by it woke up Aqua, who had been knocked out at the time. She battled Vanitas on the outside world, who had the power to use the χ-Blade; meanwhile Ventus was still putting up a fight subconsciously. Ventus's heart had rejected Vanitas's strong darkness as a foreign element, and wouldn't join completely, the soul of the χ-Blade wasn't complete, so Ventus ended up subconsciously fighting Vanitas in their dive to the heart, a battle of psychic energy, on the telepathic battlefield mainly. At the exact moment Aqua defeated outer-Vanitas, Ventus was just about to land the finishing blow on Vanitas, but then Vanitas shattered the stained glass representation of their heart, and the two of them battled in something of a state of limbo. What involved a lot of teleporting, and a few different forms of Priori _Incantatem and finally Ventus being able to finish him by using "Last word" happened all within the space of an instant on the outside world, at the same time Ventus re-absorbed Vanitas, The _χ-Blade went haywire in the real world and was destroyed. The King managed to Save Aqua and Ventus in the lanes between, but when Ventus destroyed the χ-Blade, It did damage to his own heart, and he ended up sleeping in the balance between light and darkness. Aqua took him to their old home, the land of departure, but the darkness had almost overrun it and she had no choice but to lock the heart of the world to keep the balance, at which point it became Castle Oblivion, with Ventus safely sealed away in the chamber of awakening on the fourteenth floor. Ventus's dormant heart then went to Sora, following the old connection looking for refuge. Sora, do you remember the dream you had when you were little? The day that you were sad for no reason?"

"A little, why do you?"

"A heart without a body came to your dive to the heart, or at least what it was when you were five, and asked if it could stay with you for a while until it could recover, and you said it could. Ever since then, Ventus's heart has been within yours, dormant. And then it all kicks off, because when you grow up and one day get a nobody of your own, the details bleed through the skin of the universe just like they did with you and Vanitas, and Ventus's features manifest in Roxas. Of course, they're not the same person, Ventus's heart stayed with yours, and Roxas, who originally didn't have one, forged his own over time without realizing it.

"So you're saying I _do _have a heart?" asked Roxas, sounding a little sarcastic. Riku was giving Noah a skeptical look

_I wonder,_ Noah thought, but he continued speaking.

"Yes. Without a doubt. The only reason no one was able to tell you before is because it takes one to know one. Anyway, as for Aqua, she heard Terra calling to her heart and followed it to radiant garden where she encountered Terranort. He wasn't really sure which one he was, Terra didn't have quite enough darkness to sustain Xheanort's heart. Aqua ended up battling Xheanort trying to free Terra, and Terra's heart was helping her, fighting back from within. In the end, in an attempt to eradicate Terra, Xheanort plunged his heartblade into himself and was inadvertently consumed by the darkness into the dark realms. Aqua still thought that there was a chance to save Terra, so she put on her keyblade armor and dived into the dark realms after him, but she couldn't get out fast enough. She realized the only way to save Terra was to lighten the load, so she abandoned ship. Left her keyblade and her armor to carry Xheanort back to the realms of light, where he was found by Braig, who later turned out to be Xigbar, Dilan, who became Xaldin, Aeleus, who became Lexaeus, and Ansem the wise, who he was apprenticed under as a scientist.

"Meanwhile, Aqua wanderd through the realm of darkness with only Eraqus's dead Keyblade. After years of wandering through the darkness, without feeling time pass or aging, she came to the shore of the dark margin where she met Diz, having died trying to digitalize Xemnas's Kingdom Hearts. Diz told her a summed up version of Sora's legend, at first she thought he might be Ventus, or Terra, but no luck. Diz also told her about the Birth by Sleep prospect, That Sora was the one who everyone was waiting for to bring them back to the light."

"This might actually be important—" Roxas tried to interject again, but Sora was the only one who even looked at him before Naminé started talking.

"That's where I come in, you see, Sora, when I was repairing your memories, I found some that didn't belong to you, but that Kingdom Hearts wanted you to see."

"What _is _Kingdom Hearts anyway?" Asked Sora.

"It's a lot like the over-soul. Which is a lot like the hive-mind. It's complicated." Said Noah

"Anyway, these were the memories of Terra, Ventus, Aqua, Me, Roxas, Axel, and Xion. But they were all sad memories, the painful kind. I wasn't sure if you'd be able to handle them right away, so I erased Jiminy's first journal and left a coded message in it. Apparently the king had a little trouble with data corruption, but Data-Sora was able to clear that up. Oh, I left data versions of you, me, Roxas, and Riku in the the journal as well. You were analogous to well, you, to see if you could handle the memories. Riku was supposed to protect the data of the journal, which he did well, Data-me was supposed to pass along the message of what I found in the real world, but not until Data-Roxas made sure you were strong enough by testing your resolve, to accept that the hurt is part of who we are, and also physical strength by battling you. Everything went more or less by that plan, and the King sent word to me that you were ready for the memories, and that your friends should help you—" This time Naminé was interrupted by River.

"NO! NOT MEMORIES! THE SECRETS, ALL THE SECRETS! NOT MINE! SHOULDN'T HAVE TO CARRY! NO! NO! NO! YOU CAN'T! YOU CAN'T JUST POKE ME! HURT ME! STICKING NEEDLES IN MY EYE, ASKING ME WHAT I SEE! THESE AREN'T MINE BUT I CARRY THEM ANYWAY, BURRIED SO FAR DEEP BUT THE BODIES STILL DRAG ME DOWN!" River kept going, everyone seemed a little freaked out, but as always, Noah rushed to her side to comfort her, and she calmed down.

"What wrong with her?" asked Riku, trying not to sound insensitive, and failing. River was now sleeping in Noah arms.

"She's a psychic. The government tried to turn her into a weapon, but they kept operating on her brain. They broke down the barriers that naturally filter out our emotions, block the ones we shouldn't need. But she has no choice, she feels everything. At times it gets a little too much for her to bear. Another side effect of the conditioning is mild schizophrenia. Because she's a psychic, and doesn't have the ability to control what she thinks and feels, everyone's pain always comes to her, well, everyone's everything. At one point she was being analyzed by key members of parliament, the people who know the government's dirtiest darkest secrets in a room with a psychic. Most of the secrets are buried under layers of psychosis, but every now and then one of them will surface. Talking about sharing the painful memories must have brought it back to her. She'll be fine once she comes around.

"Its sunset, I think that's enough for today. I'm going to need to observe you for a few weeks, or days to get an idea of what I'm working with before Sora and I can start working on restoring the first keyblade master. I have a techno-path friend in New Orleans who can get Nico, River, and Me into the school system without a hitch, school year starts tomorrow, right? Good. Naminé, I'm going to need you to do the people-aspect of that. Re-work people's memories so that we won't get arrested or something, can you do that? Thanks, and I think that's everything for now."

"WAIT!" Roxas shouted, everyone turned to him. "Is it just me or does anybody else have a third set of memories as well, because I woke up this morning with a twin brother named Ventus!"

"Really?" asked Noah, standing up, "how did that work?"

"Well, like you said, I've got my memories from the organization, but I also remember _this _life, but also another version of this life with Ventus! I've never met him before, but now it seems like I've known him all my life!"

"Oh, yeah, I remember Ventus now!" said Sora.

"Me too,"

"And Me,"

"So do I!"

"That's odd," said Noah. "I'll have to look into it. Does he live with you?"

"No, according to my memories he got fed up with our dad about a year ago and left, he's living with a friend now until he graduates, but I talked to him today, he seems to have memories he got from me and Sora while he was dormant, but nothing else, like he's new to this life."

"Well, that's odd, but like I said, I'll have to look into it. In the meantime, we should all get some rest, first day of school tomorrow and all."

Riku, Kairi, Sora, and Roxas all departed, leaving Noah's trio and Naminé

"Hey, Roxas, you need a ride home?" Sora asked.

"Yeah, sure. Thanks." He replied. After the three cars left the bottom of the clock tower, Nico and River were sitting on the ledge watching the sun set. Meanwhile Naminé was talking to Noah on the Northern side of the building.

"Xion was the reason the organization wanted me to take Sora's memories apart in the first place, to have a puppet, a backup plan that could wield the keyblade for them in case something happened to Roxas. She was made out of his memories of Kairi, so I had no choice but to destroy her if Sora was ever going to wake up." Explained Naminé, a little chocked up. "And because she was made of memories, when she went away the only one that was able to remember that she ever existed was me. Even Roxas forgot, and they were better friends than he and Axel ever were." The colorful sunset was just beginning to shift from orange to red as Naminé continued to explain.

"Xion _can_ be removed from Sora's memory, but not until he's more in tune with her. He needs to be able to connect to how she felt, how it is to be broken, and hurt. I hate to do this, but we,….meaning you, will have to torment Sora in the worst possible way. And, you know what that means,"

"I need the darkness,…" finished Noah.

"You can't avoid it forever; you're going to have to embrace the darkness eventually," said Naminé.

"Yeah, I know,…. But still, If I am about to go all 'Robert Chillingworth' on Sora, I'll need some time to find out what really gets at him."

"Why didn't you just read his mind?"

"It's rude to read minds without permission."

"This is _exactly_ what I'm talking about." By now the sky had gone red, and Nico was hurling toward the ground at increasing speed as the effect of gravity slowly accelerated his descent.


	3. Babysitting

Chapter 2

"NICO!" Noah shouted as he jumped of the top of the tower after his friend. To most this would appear to be a stupid move, looking back at it, Noah would agree, but at least he was able to look back. Noah used his shape-shifting abilities to stretch out his arm like Mr. Fantastic, grab Nico by the back of the shirt, and pull the two of them closer. Noah realized that Nico was seizing and convulsing violently, unable to think. Now that Noah was close to Nico, they were both moving too fast to be able to teleport safely, Not the two of them anyway. Noah tried to telepathically get inside Nico's head, but was quickly repelled, almost as if his consciousness was shaking just as hard.

_Must be some kind of psychic induced seizure, instead of physical brain thing,_ Noah thought. The ground was approaching fast, in what little time Noah had left; he went for the first tactic that came to his mind. He maneuvered himself under Nico's body, the two facing each other, Noah grabbed his wrists and used his feet to spread out their limbs, and hopefully slow the fall. Well, maybe slow the rate at which they were speeding up at least. Noah felt bones crack and muscles and organs try to separate as he hit the ground with a sickening _crack_. The pavement under Noah cracked a little, creating a small mini-crater in the ground. Nico's body didn't handle the shock well, but it had no broken bones, cushioned by Noah. River quickly ran out of the building and pulled Nico's shaking body off of Noah. She knew exactly what she was doing as she carefully tended to Nico's seizing body with medical professionalism. Meanwhile, Naminé came to Noah's side. Noah could hear his bones crack and bend as they morphed themselves back into the right formations along with his flesh. Naminé helped him up back onto his feet.

"You _jumped_ off the _Clock tower?_" She exclaimed.

"Wanted to take a shortcut. Is he alright?" Asked Noah, as he ran up to Nico and knelt down beside him and River. River shot Noah a facial expression as if to say

_He just fell off a skyscraper while having a seizure, what do you think?_

"Nico, I'm really sorry about this," apologized Noah, he put his hands on the sides of Nico's head and closed his eyes, with that, Nico stopped moving and calmed down. Noah opened his eyes again and looked up to Naminé "we're going to have to take him home to psycho-analyze him."

"What was the apology for?" Naminé.

"I forced him to go to sleep without asking," said Noah as if it were obvious.

"Why didn't you just let him fall?" She continued.

"Because then he would have died," Noah answered.

"But he would have come back to life,"

"That doesn't mean it's pleasant!"

River rolled her eyes.

Sora pulled up to Roxas' house. The lights were on and crashing and thumping sounds could be heard coming from inside. Based on their one brief meeting, Sora could easily tell that Roxas' father was one of the "Thirstiest" people Sora had ever met. They both frowned. Roxas reached for his seatbelt and started to get out.

"Thanks for riding me home." He said

_CRAP! Did I seriously just say that out loud!_

"I MEAN THE RIDE HOME! THANKS FOR GIVING ME A RIDE!" Roxas Quickly corrected himself, but Sora didn't seem to respond. As Roxas reached for the door handle, the lock popped down, sealing the door.

"Your dad's going berserk again," explained Sora, still fixated on Roxas' house. Perhaps he hadn't heard Roxas' little Freudian slip.

"Yeah, … so I'd better get in there before it gets any worse," replied Roxas.

_Crasssshhh_. Something formerly made of glass.

"You should stay the night at my place," stated Sora simply.

"Sky, I couldn't do that," Said Roxas, trying to think of a reason not to.

"I've got the house mainly to myself, I'm watching the twins tonight and Mom won't be back until tomorrow morning."

Roxas was beginning to wonder if he would have to use unlocking magic to get out of the car.

"Sora, I really couldn't jut,… come over and spend the night," said Roxas.

"I won't take no for an answer. You shouldn't have to deal with him. Especially not tonight."

"What's tonight?" Roxas asked cautiously, not wanting to get his hopes up. Sora looked at him as if he were crazy.

"_Your birthday, silly!_ Don't tell me you forgot your own birthday." A faint and somewhat unwelcome smile spread across Roxas' mouth.

"How did you find out?" He asked.

"Easy, You spent exactly a week in the virtual twilight town, which ended the last day of summer vacation, right?"

"Yeah,…"

"And 358 days since you were born you spent with the organization, altogether that's 365. A complete year. Which makes this, the last day of summer, your birthday. A day on which you shouldn't have to put up with…" Sora struggled to find a word.

"That?" offered Roxas, Nodding his head toward his own house.

"Exactly. Come over to my place. Besides, the twins love having you around. They think you're the greatest thing since sliced bread."

The two boys got to Sora's house in time to pick up Sora's younger twin brothers, Phoenix and Griffin, from the school bus stop. With the way their school district worked, for some reason the elementary schools started earlier, but also got out earlier. The twins were five years old, both with spiky (much shorter than Sora's) brown hair.

"SORA! SORA! SORA!" Both children came off the bus shouting for their older brother. Sora greeted the young boys and started walking with them the short distance back to the house.

"Where's mommy? One of them asked.

"She's had to go away for a little while, but she'll be back tomorrow to send you guys to school. But I'm going to tuck you in tonight. Won't that be fun?"

"Not really," said one twin.

_Oh,…_

"Well, you know what else? Guess who's here today!"

"Santa claus!" asked Phoenix excitedly. Both twins' eyes lit up.

"No, sorry not Santa, he comes in winter, guess again." The Twins thought for a moment.

"The Easter bunny?"

"The plumber?"

"Chuck Norris?"

"No, but you're close, it's Roxas!"

Upon entering the house both twins greeted Roxas with a big hug, which only came up to about Roxas' waist, and proceeded to insist that they play pirates. Sora took this as his cue to inform them that they should finish their homework first, and then they'll see. The two boys protested at first, but eventually gave in.

"That was not my idea," said Sora.

"No, its okay, I'll play with them," responded Roxas.

"I don't know what it is, you're the only one they like dueling with," Said Sora, sitting down.

"Well, they can't duel with _you_"

"And why not?"

"They need a challenge, don't they?"

"Why don't you make some paper hats for them, I'll be right back."

"Wait, where are you-?" but Sora was already up the stairs. As he entered his room he made his way over to his desk, looking at the key chains mounted on the wall, but then pulled out the one kept safely in his desk drawer, the one he was saving. He ran back downstairs and sat on the couch next to Roxas, who was folding paper pirate hats on the coffee table. Roxas looked up at Sora, but before he could say anything, Sora held up the keychain for him to take.

"Happy Birthday," said Sora with a grin. Roxas slowly took his gift,

"A keychain?" he asked. The Keychain in question was a long black feather, fastened to the end of a chain, and a clip where it could be attached to the handle of a Keyblade.

"The One-Winged Angel, that's the one I got for beating Sephiroth in the platinum challenge. I want you to have it."

"Sky, you shouldn't have, I mean, I can't take one of your-,"

"Of course you can, besides I've still got Fenrir, and you never got to, well, _had_ to fight Sephiroth, so it's only right." Roxas paused for a moment not knowing what to say, technically, this was the first birthday present he had ever received, excluding the ones he remembered getting in the alternate past.

"Thank you, Sky, I appreciate this," Said Roxas. Sora smiled; glad he was able to make Roxas happy.

Before long, the four boys were in Sora's backyard, Roxas and the Twins both wearing paper hats. The Twins where shouting and playing happily as they charged Roxas with wooden swords, but Roxas played along, and put up a big fight, dual-wielding two wooden swords of his own. Roxas fought with exaggerated and theatrical movements, nothing like a real battle. Phoenix and Griffin mainly just flailed their swords around in the general direction of Roxas and shouted pirate-ish phrases. By the time the sun had set, Roxas had a wooden sword tucked under his own arm, and was making the twins giggle with an extravagant playful death-scene. As the four of them went back inside to get away from the bugs, Sora turned to Roxas.

"You really are good with them," he said.

"Yeah, I guess. They're fun kids," said Roxas. Sora lead Roxas into the Kitchen.

"We're going to have to make dinner," said Sora. "Do you know how to cook?"

"The organization assigned me to dinner duty once,….._just _once. Do you?"

"Not a clue," Sora responded.

They decided to try something simple, pasta. Things started off relatively easy, as Sora and Roxas started to get the hang of it they started talking.

"Dinner duty?" asked Sora.

"Well, yeah. What, did you think I ate nothing but ice cream for the first year of my life?" Roxas responded.

"I never really thought about it." Roxas Continued,

"Everyone enjoyed Zexion's cooking, because he could just throw a slab of Tofu on our plates and use that little illusion book of his to make us think we were eating the best meal we've ever tasted. Xaldin was the best _real_ chef. What can I say? The man had a talent for anything slicey-dicey."

"You don't have to tell _me_ twice," commented Sora, he turned around and pulled the collar of his shirt down slightly showing Roxas a complex of scars on the back of Sora's left shoulder.

"Ohhh, he did that to you?"

"Beast's castle, but it was worth it," Sora put his shirt back to normal and turned back to Roxas, "You should have seen the look on Belle's face when she made off with her freedom _and _the rose. I think that night was the closest I've ever seen a Nobody get to angry," laughed Sora. Roxas chuckled.

"You know, for a while Xaldin was getting a little carried away with the whole 'stabbity' habbit. Axel almost lost a finger trying to sneak a grape from the fruit salad."

"What happened?" Sora asked, as he read the directions on the back of the pre-frozen garlic bread and opened the oven.

"Xemnas confiscated his spears. He figured Xaldin just had to cool down for a few days, ended sitting him in the back of the class with safety scissors and construction paper, without the classroom."

"That must have been annoying."

"Yeah, he put Axel on dinner duty for the next few days; Xaldin did miss having his lances at first, but it turns out he's a pretty talented paper cutter. He made all sorts of little intricate decorations and hung them from the roof with string. You should have seen Luxord's face when Xaldin ran out of paper. Luxord found a bunch of little snipped bits and pieces of playing cards in a discarded pile on a table one day."

"Oh, wow."

"Eventually Xemnas finally got fed up, so to speak, with Axel's 'unique' cooking style. Everything well done, _verrrrrryyy _well done. I kid you not, one time for dinner we had charcoal with a charcoal garnish, and a side of charcoal topped with ashes." There was suddenly a loud violent hissing noise, both boys turned and saw the spaghetti pot boiling over and dumping its contents onto the electric burner beneath it, which were fizzing and evaporating.

"Whoa!" Sora nearly jumped out of his skin as he grabbed the pot took it off the heat, and put it in the sink. Roxas Grabbed a few pieces of paper towel off the roll and started mopping up spilled water and noodles on the stovetop.

"AHH!" Sora yelped as he burnt his hand on the pot, or perhaps some of the water, Roxas abandoned his task and rushed to go help Sora, who looked up to see this happen.

"No! don't!" but Sora was too late, with a quick _fwooosh_ the hot burner ignited the dry parts of the paper towels Roxas had left on it, causing a small plume of orange flames. "look out!" shouted Sora, as he threw his hand outward, and shot a blast of Blizzaga magic toward the flames, which were then extinguished, but now a streak of rough frost, like an ice burn, trailed across the stovetop and a little up the wall on the opposite side. There was a sharp but faint crackling sound as the paper towels, water, and burner all cooled rapidly. As if on cue, the Tomato sauce in the pot on the next burner erupted into flames as what was left of the sauce inside started to bubble and splatter everywhere, setting fire to a nearby overhead wooden cabinet. In panic, Roxas Grabbed the nearest source of water, the pot in the sink, and threw its contents over the flames and the burning pot, cooling them both down but scattering limp spaghetti everywhere. The two boys finally got a chance to calm down as they looked over the charred, papery, icy, wet, noodle-ey, sauce-splattered mess that had developed in a very short period of time.

"At least the Garlic bread is alright," said Sora, always looking at the bright side. However, as one might expect, it was at this point that the oven started giving off large plumes of smoke and an awful burning smell.

"Really? Come on Sky, you might as well have said 'what could possibly go wrong.'" Said Roxas with a laugh as they approached the oven, opened the door, and started waving the air with their hands at the billowing smoke coming from inside. Sora coughed, walked over to a nearby window and opened it.

"Hey, Roxas, you mind?" He asked.

Roxas snapped his fingers, and a torrent of Aeroga magic quickly cleared up the room.

"Let's,…. Order a pizza," suggested Roxas.

"I thought you'd never ask."

After the Pizza had been consumed and little teeth had been brushed, Sora returned downstairs after tucking in his brothers. Roxas was sitting on the couch, a blank gaze on his face as he stared off into space and fiddled with the One-Winged Angel Keychain absentmindedly. Many people would make the mistake of assuming that Roxas and Sora are very much alike, but in fact the two had many differences, Sora pondered this briefly as he considered that he had always been the type to jump in head first, to leap before he looks. Roxas was much more pensive, he tended to over think and analyze things closer. Sora quietly made his way into the kitchen, now that the littl'uns were in bed. He got out two bowls and two spoons, the then opened the freezer door, and pulled out the other thing he had been saving for today; a big tub of sea-salt ice cream.

_I can't believe all this time and we've always thought it was just in Popsicle form, _thought Sora as he generously scooped the cyan ice cream into the bowls (particularly Roxas'). He wondered for a moment if he should put a birthday candle in Roxas', but upon looking for one, the only one he could find was leftover from a birthday of his a few years ago in the shape of the number 13.

_Yeah, baaaad idea._ Sora put the ice cream back in the freezer, but left out the scooper in case they decided to go for seconds. He entered the living room with the two bowls of Ice cream and confronted Roxas.

"Happy Birthday, Roxas," He said with a smile. Roxas snapped out of his trance and looked up.

"Is that sea-salt?" He asked, grinning.

"You bet. Your favorite, right?"

"Yeah, thanks," Said Roxas, as he accepted the bowl of ice cream, "You know, Diz was right after all; you _are_ too nice for your own good," he continued, as he started to eat his ice-cream. Sora looked at the clock, 8:05, Twilight was starting to seep in through the windows on the west side of the house.

"so, you wanna watch a movie?"

"Sure, what've you got?" Sora walked over to the cabinet where they kept the DVDs, he smirked and pulled out a case showing it to Roxas. _Twilight_

"Why do you even have that movie?" Roxas Asked.

"It's my mom's. Okay, have you ever seen _Secondhand Lions_?" Sora continued.

"Yeah, I didn't think it was that great. But the boy in that movie sounds just like you, I swear it's uncanny."

"How about _The Matrix_?" Sora offered.

"Nah, I think I've had enough long black cloaks and virtual reality worlds for my lifetime," said Roxas with a chuckle.

"Star Trek?" asked Sora.

"The new one?"

"Yeah, that one"

"…I was never really into the whole 'trekie' thing,…" said Roxas cautiously.

"You don't really have to be, they made the movie so anyone could see it. The only reason we got it is because my mom thinks Zachery Quinto, the guy who plays Spock, is really hot."

"I thought Leonard Nimoy was supposed to be Spock," Said Roxas

"He is, He's spock from the future. But, you know, his voice sounds really familiar too, but I can't quite put my finger on it," Said Sora as he put the DVD into the player.

Sylar was waiting in the doorway for their arrival. They didn't see him as they first walked in, but then he stepped forward out of the shadows and said, quietly, calmly

"Boo." River reflexively spun around clockwise on her left heel, simultaneously kicking Sylar across the chin with her right and turning around to face her possible opponent in one swift movement. Sylar fell to the ground, and as he got up to face them , the bleeding cut on his lip regenerated, healing itself.

"Dad! What are you doing here? You're going to give me a heart attack, sneaking up on us like that!" exclaimed Noah, turning around to face their surprise visitor.

"Why didn't you tell me you were back?" Sylar Asked simply.

"Uh, River, why don't you and Nico go over into the next room and check his brain out, I'm going to talk to Gabriel for a minute or two," Noah instructed. River took Nico into the other room, while Noah stayed with his father.

"so, what brings you all the way out to Twilight Town?"

"You, and the pulse." Responded Gabriel Grey

"What about the pulse?"

"It didn't happen!" exclaimed Sylar, "When you left on the day we met, you warned me about this electromagnetic terrorist pulse that would attack America and short out all the technology in the country, but then it never happened!" Noah shrugged.

"I thought it was a fixed event in time, I guess it was more flux than I thought, but did you warn everyone I asked you too?"

"Yes, of course I did, and I got the multiplier power just like you said so I could be in more than one place at once, but then the pulse never even happened."

"Did you try to stop it?"

"Yes, I figured you said it was fixed, but I might as well try." Sylar explained as he sat down.

"Well, there you have it, the future can change just by talking about it. I guess it was flux, but only had just enough flexibility to be changed by someone as powerful as you. Oh, you didn't kill that multiplier to get his power did you?" Said Noah as he sat down on the small couch across from his father.

"No, I just did that empathy-link thing like you said. So, if the future is changed now, what does that mean?"

"No way to tell for certain, this means that America gets to stay a world superpower now, but for how much longer? And how will not being a third world country affect the rest of the world? The Transgenic thing is still going to happen, that's for certain, but who knows? Time can be weird like that, like, if the Hindenburg didn't crash, hundreds of thousands of more people would have died as an indirect result, if the first mars colony didn't explode, earth would have been overrun by parasites that spread through water, not to mention the charting of deep space in the early fifty-first century never would have been started, if Vesuvius didn't erupt, the Pyroviles would have used its energy to wipe out humanity. I guess at this point the best we can do is keep a close eye on the choices America makes as a world power from now on," explained Noah. "So, how are things in New York?"

"Not bad. A lot more anti-mutant protest over there, there was a big deal a few months back when Clair sued the college for trying to kick her out because she's a mutant, that's what they're calling us now."

"How'd that go?"

"Supreme court said they couldn't, but people weren't happy about it. There's been a lot of talk about the government rounding us up, like what they tried a while back. At least now there are people who will fight against it, politically. The trouble is people are concerned with how the legal system would handle criminals with powers; it isn't designed for stuff like that so people figure just lock us all up in Max security before we become criminals in the first place."

"So, basically a lot like it is in X-men?"

"Pretty much, yeah. Speaking of, I can regenerate now, when do I get my adamantium implants?" Joked Sylar. Noah laughed.

"You've got more powers than the justice league on radio-active steroids! The last thing you need is indestructibility, or my powers for that matter, don't think I didn't catch that," Said Noah, as he telepathically blocked the psychic empathy link Gabriel was trying to form. Sylar shrugged.

"So that was this River you kept telling me about?" He asked.

"Yeah, Nico and I picked her up in the thirty-first century after the earth was used up and abandoned. She's very special,"

"Yes, I've heard. Numerous times. Anyway, I had a visitor while you were off traveling."

"Oh? Who was it?"

"A man named Aanthoni, he said to specify that it was with two as and an i." The name sent shivers down Noah's spine.

"What happened?"

"He tried to kill me, but found my regenerating problematic. He seemed desperate. He really wanted me to tell him how to find you."

"Are you sure you don't mean sadistic?" inquired Noah.

"He was just as powerful as you, Noah, exact same abilities. It's been a while since I've had to put up a fight like that, much less lose. Also, He told me back then that I should pass on a message to you today, when you return, he said he wants you to meet him at these coordinates." Sylar pulled a small piece of paper covered in odd symbols out of his pocked and passed it over to Noah. Noah looked down at the strange language and read it, he looked up to tell his father 'thank you' but he was already gone without a trace.

"He _must_ have met a teleporter," Noah muttered to himself.

He walked over into the other room where Nico was sitting down in a chair with River kneeling on one knee in front of him, staring sharply at his eyes as she read his mind. Noah Knew better than to interrupt her. River stood up, Nico blinked, and River looked at Noah.

"One man's junk is another man's treasure," she said with a sigh.

"So, that wasn't just a junk thought Aanthoni placed in his mind all that time ago?"

"So, what does that mean? What's wrong with my mind?" asked Nico.

"It wasn't supposed to become active until after he realized he was done traveling," explained River to Noah. "Most likely he assumed Nico wouldn't be done traveling until he was separated permanently from you, at which point he wouldn't have anyone to recondition him, at least not on a level that can supersede or counteract telepathic reprogramming on this scale."

"Maybe that's a good thing, maybe that means he didn't think he had to make subconscious detection of telepathic interference with the thought process in question a conditional trigger that would lead to some other behavior, weather perceived voluntary or otherwise," replied Noah.

"You know it's unlikely this is in any way a simplified telepathic total reconditioning."

"Maybe we could play that to our advantage, take this from the over-specificity angle."

"We still don't know what the primary psycho-catalyst is." By this point Nico had given up on trying to understand what they were saying, when Noah and River started talking science jargon, all he could do was nod on occasion when they stopped for breath. Eventually, Noah finally turned to look at Nico.

"Alright, here's the deal, we don't know what's causing this but we know it's not just a one-time fluke. We can take a look in your mind to find out more or try and tell it to go back to the way it was, but until we know more even entering your mind telepathically could drastically change you forever. For all we know, trying to remove it, or even investigate it could make you lose all of your memories, make you lose just some of your memories so that you only see one side of something, make you think you're a chicken, make you want to kill yourself, make you want to kill someone else, make you see colors differently, It could even make your powers as a Hades-child go haywire. Or it could be absolutely nothing at all."

"I don't think it's worth it then, if any or all of that could happen we should wait until we know more. How do we find out more?"

"I'm going to meet with Aanthoni now; maybe if I have something he wants he'd be willing to trade for the information on exactly how he implanted the message."

"You mean lie," said River.

"Yeah he probably would," said Noah.

"So why don't you just read _his_ mind?" asked Nico. River looked at Nico as if he were an idiot.

"Nico, you know I'm a powerful telepath, the reason I say 'one of the most powerful' instead of 'the most powerful' is because, first of all, I haven't met everyone in the universe, and secondly, Aanthoni is just as good at it as I am," Noah explained. "If I were to engage him telepathically, Things might get messy, and by 'messy' I mean really bad," Noah clarified. Noah stood up straight. "Wish me luck," he said.

"Good luck," Nico wished. River kissed him on the check. Nico found this greatly surprising, he had always known that they got along really well, and definitely liked each other, but he had never considered the possibility that,…, well, that there was kissing involved. The next moment, Noah Teleported, flickering out of sight.

"Was that, by any chance, a little kiss I just saw?" asked Nico curiously.

"Yes," Said River flatly.

"And, should you have your way, might there be any more little kisses in the near future?"

"Near, in regard to the term future, is a subjective term, therefore open to questioning and a matter of personal opinion," she said monotonously, then turned to Nico, "Yes."

Star Trek with Zachery Quinto and Leonard Nimoy whose voice was eerily familiar ended a little after ten o' clock. Sora yawned.

"We should probably get to bed," he stated drowsily. Roxas swooned internally at the use of the phrasing Sora had chosen, even though he knew perfectly well what Sora really meant. Sora got up, turned off the TV and the player, returned the disc to its case and its shelf. He picked up the two bowls with cyan sea-salt liquid still clinging to some of the walls and took them into the kitchen. He started to head for the stairs, and turned his head to Roxas,

"This way," he said. Roxas got up hesitantly, was Sora actually inviting him to his room? He followed Sora up the stairs and down the Hall, Sora stopped at a door. "This is the bathroom, if you need it," oh, so that's why they were going upstairs.

"Cool, a conditional room, what is it if I don't need it?" Joked Roxas. Sora smiled, and then continued to lead Roxas Down the hall.

"And, this is my room," he said, opening the door. "So, I'll be,.." Sora paused, reconsidering his wording, "In the event that you need anything, you will be able to ask me downstairs, and don't hesitate by the way. Good Night," he said, heading back for the staircase.

"Wait," said Roxas, Sora turned and looked. "Aren't _you_ going to sleep in your room?"

"No, I'm going to sleep on the pull-out couch downstairs, You're going to use my room," explained Sora.

"Sora! I'm not going to kick you out of your own room, you let me sleep on the couch," said Roxas, heading in Sora's direction, toward the staircase. Sora put out a hand, and placed it firmly on Roxas' chest.

"No," he said, "you're my guest, and I'm going to make sure you have a _proper_ bed, I'm not taking No for an answer." Roxas realized that at this point he might as well go with it, but still, Sora moved his hands from Roxas' chest to his shoulders and pushed him into his room. Inside, Sora secretly relished the opportunity to have an excuse to touch Roxas, but he didn't let it show. Sora lead Roxas all the way to the bed, stopped there, and then turned and left the room, closing the door behind him. Roxas walked back to the door of Sora's room to protest, but there was an odd magic noise accompanied by the _click_ of a lock as a beam of light flashed through the keyhole under the doorknob and faded away. Roxas rolled his eyes.

"I can do that trick to, you know!" he argued through the door. "And walk through walls, Locking me in is pointless!

"Good night, Roxas!" came Sora's reply, fading in volume as he got farther down the stairs. That was the first time in a very long while Roxas had gone to sleep with a smile on his face, at least someone cares about a Nobody.


	4. London Bridge is falling Down

Chapter Three: London Bridge is falling down.

_Zwiiip_. Funny thing, teleportation. It's a rather difficult event to describe. Have you ever seen those pictures on the street that look like they pop up or sink down, but only if you look at them from the right angle, and the moment you move you realize they're actually flat? No matter what angle you look at Noah from when he teleports, that's the one you continue to see and realize, is flat as he flickers into or out of existence. Dematerializing looks a lot like this Image seems to blink out, like suddenly turning off a TV, perhaps an older one. Rematerialization is very much like the same instant, played backward. Sometimes, a biological-based teleport means that the subject can throw in a little illusion power or time-warping if they're lucky, and leave an image of themselves behind, sometimes arrive before they leave.

Anyway, Noah materialized onto the roofed, open walking area just above the clock face of Big Ben sometime in the middle of the night. Actually, he didn't. Big Ben is really the name of the bell inside the clock tower, the tower itself isn't named Big Ben, but people seem to call it that anyway. Noah looked out over the London skyline, not all old timey, like the last time he had gone there with River and Nico during the industrial revolution. Now it had tall skyscrapers, metal and glass buildings, the works.

"I was starting to think you might not show up," came a familiar voice that almost made Noah tremble, almost. Noah turned around and saw Aanthoni standing there. He looked to be about 17 or 18, just slightly older than Noah, but looks can be deceiving, especially with shape-shifters. He had pitch-black shiny hair slicked back 50's-style. He wore a black leather jacket, and a slightly tight, but by no means unfitting, scarlet T-shirt that showed off his muscles. They weren't bulky or huge, but they were noticeable. Aanthoni was also wearing his usual Jeans, but had decided to forgo the large dark sunglasses that usually hid his eyes. His red eyes. Not the whole eye was red, the white and the pupil were completely normal; it's just the iris, the color, that's completely and undeniably blood-red. Compared to Noah's soft, kind, almost boyish face, Aanthoni might have been mistaken for an ape. However, in a normal setting, one would simply see that he had a strong masculine impression, a square-ish face, slightly large eyebrows, a thick neck and a cleft chin. As Noah turned to see the owner of the voice, Aanthoni smiled wide, showing his too-perfect unnaturally straight white teeth.

"Got rid of the fangs?" Noah asked.

"Wasn't working for me, kept poking my lips. I tried jigsaw sharp teeth for a while, fitted together like a piranha, but they kept getting dull, and sharpening them is a pain. What about you Noah? Any new body parts I should know about? Perhaps you've grown a spine since we last met? Maybe some balls?"

"What did you do to Nico?" Noah asked, he had a serious tone in his voice.

"Sang him a song, he thought it was pretty and we got married," said Aanthoni sarcastically.

"I'm serious Aanthoni!"

"Why would I tell you? It's so much more fun to watch the two of you squirm." There was a short pause, then Noah spoke again.

"Please, Aanthoni, let me help you. You shouldn't have to be like this, burning with violent anger all the time! You're hurting innocent people!"

"NOBODY IS INNOCENT! Why do you care so much about these lousy pathetic humans! Have you even seen them! They steal, kill, they wound, they mame, they have people whose job it is to find new and creative ways of hurting people! They're selfish beasts with no regard for one another, or even themselves! They know they're destroying their planet, that they're ruining lives, that their children are doomed and society is slipping, heading towards the worst world imaginable and they do nothing! They have people with money enough to buy entire islands with fancy houses and gas-guzzling sports cars, and seven mistresses, while children just a hop skip and a jump away are living in poverty, starving to death every day! What's the point of money and power if it's completely arbitrary? The only ones that have it are _always_ the ones who least deserve it! But deep down, they're all the same anyway! They know that the world isn't going to last, that there are way more human beings than there ever should have been in the first place, but they insist on reproducing like freaking gerbils! They never learn! They're so _stupid! _Insignificant pestilence! And the rest of the universe is no different! Almost every species there is just the same, mindless cretins totally convinced of their own superiority."

"What did Nico ever do that's so bad? Why do you have to punish him? Look, take out your anger on me, but Nico never did anything wrong!"

"He never did anything _right _either, he's just a part of it, and he's going to grow up and own a car and have a job, and look out for himself while the rest of the world is screaming in pain, so I need to make it scream louder."

"Do you really think that's the solution?"

"No, that's the end. These people are going to suffer for what they've done as they're going out, but I have to destroy this universe-,"

"Let me guess, before you make your own better one? Run by you?"

"No, just destroy it. That's the only way, nothingness."

"But I'm guessing you're going to get 'enjoyment' out of this one while you still can?" Noah Asked. Aanthoni smiled, Noah kept talking. "What do you want from _me_?"

"What do I want? Noah, we're Space Lords, the only two in existence at the moment. We're practically family, but _no_. You don't write, you don't call, you don't return my texts, what's a god to do?"

"We're not gods, Aanthoni. And if it'll make you happy I'll send you a postcard."

"When I fix the universe, there will be nothing. Just empty Oblivion, not even an endless vacuum, but no space for a vacuum to exist in. no more time, no more space, even the gods, any ones you like, will cease to exist. You and I are the only ones worthy of surviving this, of existing beyond existence, you said you wanted to help me, well here's your chance," explained Aanthoni.

"we both know that's not what I meant."

"You _will_ help me… even if I have to… oh… steal your heart?" said Aanthoni. Just then another boy stepped into view; he looked exactly like Sora but with dark black hair and yellow eyes. His hands were relaxed at his sides, palms facing in, but from his right hand a shaft of darkness appeared, accompanied by a shrill _zzzzzaaappp_ as blue and black sparks jumped up and down its length and a trail of cubes of blue light spiraled helically along its length as Vanitas' Keyblade appeared. The _Void Gear_ was mostly black, with a red border. The teeth of the Keyblade were shaped like half of a mechanical square-toothed gear, where the center would be; a blue reptilian eye pattern. The shaft of the Keyblade looked like a chunk of metal that thinned out in the middle and got thicker as it approached the teeth and the handle. It was also wrapped in tight black chains that looked as if they were thrown on haphazardly as they crossed and overlapped at odd unorganized angles. The rain guard where the blade connected to the handle was yet another blue eye with a black slit-like pupil. The Hilt as a whole also looked like a black gear, the cross guard consisted of two arcs with the teeth of the gear facing outward, leaving space for the grip to cut through the empty space in the middle of the gear.

"Vanitas?" Noah asked, surprised. He then addressed Aanthoni, "_You_ were the one who restored Ventus?"

"I restored Vanitas," corrected Aanthoni, "Ventus was, …. an undesirable by-product. He just kind of, _happened_," explained Aanthoni. Vanitas reared the _Void Gear_ up, ready for a battle. His stance looked like one that would indicate a mainly offensive strategy; feet far apart, body and head turned slightly so that his left foot and hand were both facing noah, Keyblade held high, his right arm extended upward, but bent at the elbow, a little bit like drawing an arrow. He held it as if ready to lunge, his palm facing away from his body with his thumb and forefinger at the forward end such that the tip was pointing at Noah, and the Teeth were pointing to the ground.

"What did he offer you, Vanitas," asked Noah, "power? Money? Wimen? Whtever it is he won't give it to you. Once you give him control of my heart he'll be done with you and get rid of you like a disposable battery"

"He's offered me control of the χ-Blade," Vanitas said cockily, his voice sounded exactly like Sora's.

"So, what'll it be, Noah? Join us? Or do we have to destroy you?" Asked Aanthoni as he summoned his own blade. Aanthoni transformed the air particles into his sword, as he did it was like a black smoke gathered around and assembled itself in his hand, solidifying into a short, steeply-curved Falchion blade. The blade was pitch-black but trimmed in a thin red border along the serrated cutting edge. One thought that always popped into Noah's head when he saw Aanthoni's blade was,

_Who the heck has a _**serrated **_sword?_

_I do,_ Aanthoni answered back telepathically.

"I don't want to have to fight you, we can settle this peacefully," urged Noah.

"I wouldn't want to fight us either!" Vanitas taunted, but he felt rather silly, as Aanthoni had already began to attack Noah.

Aanthoni rushed him, and slammed him into the wall, causing cracks to spread along the stone where Noah hit. He went for a lunge with his blade, but Noah blocked it, crossing his own two long slender swords. They appeared to be similar to Samurai swords, silvery, very thin, but cut off at an angle at the tip they didn't widen or shorten at any point along the blade, and the cross-guard was small, almost not there. They were clearly designed to be quick, light, and maneuverable rather than heavy for strength.

Noah pulled his blades away from each other, forcing Aanthoni's back with a scissor-like motion, but the minute jagged teeth on Aanthoni's blade wreaked havoc on the cutting edge of Noah's as a flurry of yellow sparks resulted from the friction. Aanthoni teleported, instantly rematerializing behind Noah and slahing at him, but Noah was able to deflect the blow from behind while turning around. Aanthoni leapt backward, phasing though to the inside of the clock tower and was followed by Noah. Inside, Noah spotted Aanthoni, who flipped his sword so as to hold it by the blade, and slammed it into the _real_ "Big Ben" causing it to ring with deafening sound. As Noah teleported to Aanthoni, the noise suddenly stopped as Aanthoni absorbed it, and then, before Noah had a chance to strike, Aanthoni's blade telekinetically suspended itself behind Aanthoni's back so that he could put his palms facing eachother a few inches apart, emitting the sonic energy at a different frequency. The blast almost caused Noah to lose his balance, but the clock tower was less lucky as the blast caused the walls and roof around them to crumble as if glass shattered by a voice. As the top of the tower collapsed around them and fell to the ground, Vanitas jumped in, Keyblade poised High to strike, but was thrown of his trajectory by a telekinetic push from Noah. The three of them were now battling on the flattened top of the clock tower just above the clock faces. Vanitas tried to run up to take another blow, but this time was thrown through the air by Aanthoni's mind.

"Let the grown-ups talk for a minute, kiddo," he commented, as he and Noah continued to clash their swords, utilizing not just their arms but their whole bodies as well. Aanthoni lept back again, and in midair made a bowling-type motion with his free hand absorbing thermal energy causing a thick layer of ice crystals to extend across the ground toward Noah and then curve upward like a wave as they reached him, but Noah teleported out of the way in time and rematerialized right in front of the ice wall just as Aanthoni landed. The brittle solid Nitrogen now beneath Noah's feet shattered, and the sharp fragments lifted themselves in the air and hurled toward Aanthoni, who did a back flip off the side of the tower to avoid them. His hands grabbed onto the ledge as he swung around and phased through the number XII. The next moment, there was an explosive sonic shock wave that emanated from inside the tower and shattered the clock faces into thousands of glass fragments which all slowed down in their fall until they seemed suspended in time, unable to move forward. Aanthoni shot up from the middle of the ground, telekinetically blasting the middle of the floor away, and the glass pieces rushed to him, concentrating into a single stream that charged Noah on his command. Noah teleported to behind Aanthoni, but instantly had to teleport again to a remote area, then again and again, until the glass shards finally left no escape and caught him up in a writhing storm of clinking glass, which sounded more like shrieking. The churning mass of glass organized into a rough sphere around Noah, constantly moving, and eventually a pink spread across the glass storm, soon turning dark red, the blood-stained glass fell, now reduced to a sandy powder by the sheer force of the abrasion, and revealed a foggy sphere of energy floating in the middle, much like Aanthoni's blade materialized, forming from foggy smoky clouds, so did Noah's body form around his preserved consciousness, black cloak and all as if nothing had happened. In anger, Aanthoni teleported high into the air, and pushed his arm out forward (which was really more like downward at his angle) and from his palm let loose a huge sound wave, the ring of clear energy expanding as it moved forward, but then suddenly started to shrink down again, still moving forward until it disappeared into Noah's hand who had teleported to a midpoint between the top of the tower and Aanthoni. Aanthoni didn't waste a second since unleashing the concussive sound blast, and teleported to the top of the tower under Noah, and started psychically ripping it apart, crumbling it from the top down by stressing just the right pressure points all the way down the tower. As Noah fell, he angled his body and adjusted it to just avoid the toppling tower, but Aanthoni Quickly caught up to him. As Noah fell past the clock hands, now in front of gears and mechanisms on the inside, Aanthoni with a motion of each of his arms, ripped off the hands with psychic power and continued to fall with Noah. With a motion of Aanthoni's arm and hand, the minute hand threw itself at Noah, quarter way down the tower, Noah let it himself phase through it, and landed on it temporarily, icy frost spread from his feet and the one hand he had placed on it for balance until the entire thing looked like a blue frozen clock-cicle, as Noah jumped off the now highly brittle metal shattered, Noah kept falling down, but seemed as if moving up toward Aanthoni as he spun around completely in the air, throwing the hour hand straight at Noah like an arrow. Just as the hand was about to pierce him throught the chest, Noah teleported, instantly reappearing right above the hand. He held his right hand out and to the back as if catching something heavy, and then moved as if throwing something at Aanthoni, while the hour hand stopped its downward descent, and flew back up past Noah Hitting Aanthoni and thowing him off his course. They were now halfway down the tower (still falling at normal speed) which was still crumbling and collapsing, the avalanche just keeping up with them. Aanthoni let go of his black sword, and straightened out his body, catching up to Noah and grabbing him closer by the front of his cloak, the two Aanthoni threw a punch, which Noah managed to evade. Meanwhile, Noah dropped his own swords, which flew behind him and blocked Aanthoni's blade from impaling him from behind. As Noah and Anthony continued to struggle, punching, and kicking and kneeing eachother, both refusing to let go, their three collective blades clashed and clanged together in dangerous proximity to the two foes, seeming to have minds of their own. Of course, both weapons being made by Space Lords, were made of top-of-the-line custom metal that was virtually indestructible. Three quarters of the tower had crumbled, keeping up with the conflict between the two boys. Aanthoni's blade went to stab Noah straight in the back, but Noah's swords arranged themselves into an X, blocking the tip of the blade as it tried to push through and Noah tried to push back, meanwhile trying to struggle past Aanthoni's limbs. Noah let his foot extend out and touch the wall of the tower where it had not yet crumbled, violently throwing of his fall by adding just a split second of friction causing Aanthoni and him to rapidly switch places, Noah now on the top. At that same moment, he pushed Aanthoni away, and spread out both arms to the side, letting his thin blades return to their place and relieving the resistance on Aanthoni's, allowing it to shoot upward and cut through Aanthoni's back, the tip coming out of the front of his chest. Finally the two of them landed on the street below, Aanthoni First, hitting the pavement hard, but Noah phasing through them both as the clock tower was finally reduced to a pile of rubble. Noah rose up out of the ground like a ghost, stopping just when his feet were above the pavement. He saw a figure still falling among some debris, and teleported it to him, causing Vanitas to materialize right in front of Noah's hand. Vanitas tried to strike at the boy who had just saved his life, but Noah backed up avoiding the hit, and was once again back on the offensive. He slashed at Aanthoni with both swords, but they passed through what appeared to be a frozen Image of Vanitas ready to strike.

"Too slow!" came Sora's voice as Vanitas rematerialized behind and above Noah, striking straight down with the _Void Gear_, Noah teleported out of the way just as the Keyblade hit the ground and caused an eruption of quartz-like ice crystals to sprout up from the spot where the blade hit the ground. Noah pushed his hand outward, and Vanitas was uncontrollably thrown through the air about ten feet back. It was Now that Aanthoni emerged, he started running toward Noah, as he did the pavement cracked and split under his feet, lifing up in huge chunks. Soon what was once a road lifted up into a sideways snake-like vortex of rock, a current heading straight for Noah as Aanthoni jumped up and hitched a ride on one of the pieces, standing on it like a surfboard as the rest of the current rushed Noah. Noah started to run from the long sideways tornado of pavement, but Aanthoni soon caught up to him, speeding forward alongside Noah, Noah turned his head but kept running forward as their blades clashed and tangled together, Noah using his left hand. On the other side, Vanitas Tried to attack from above on Noah's right, Keyblade once again held high over his head ready to strike.

_Clang,clang,_ Vanitas swung the _Void Gear_ back and forth once in rapid succession before even landing, but Noah deflected both blows with his right-hand sword, causing a quick flash of sparks with both blows. Vanitas was thrown off balance once more, and instead of landing on his feet ended up landing on his side and tumbling rapidly across the ground. Meanwhile, Aanthoni took advantage of Noah's momentary division of focus and twisted his blade around such that he could use it to pull Noah up to him, which he did, followed by grabbing him and teleporting them both deeper into the city of London. Aanthoni landed on the top of The Gherkin, a tall conical building with walls almost completely of interlocking triangular glass windows (It was actually shaped somewhat similar to a cob of corn), And forcefully pushed Noah down. Noah hit the side of the building and tumbled, flipping through the air down its side. He finally came to his senses half a second later, flipped both blades in his hand, and dug them into the side of the skyscraper. Still falling, his swords created two parallel slices in the side of the building as they slowed his fall, sharp enough to cut through the glass rather than simply shatter it. However, as his fall slowed, the swords created less and less of a controlled cut, eventually a whole area in front of Noah shattered out of the building, and Noah fell back with it. Aanthoni was quick to catch Noah though the rain of shattered glass, and swing him up sideways, slamming him flat onto the still solid wall next to him. Aanthoni's blade rammed through the glass on the other side of where Noah had just teleported from, he now stood sideways on the building (warping gravitational energy) just above Aanthoni. Aanthoni quickly maneuvered to his feet in front of Noah and tried to strike, but missed as Noah rematerialized right behind him, and slashed with one blade, blocked by Aanthoni's sword, he started to swing the other and completed the action without breaking the motion behind Aanthoni and to the left a little, but he already teleported to a position with his back to Noah's. He pivoted around on his foot and slashed through the air where Noah just was as Noah appeared Upside down (assuming the side of the building is actually down) above Aanthoni, cross-slashing his two blades as he did what looked like the latter half of a front-flip landing in behind Aanthoni once more. And so, the two of them continued to rapidly teleport about each other, slashing and clanging their blades together, which sometimes caused flashes of sparks. They preformed numerous acrobatic maneuvers, twisting their bodies and legs, and arms in multiple directions trying to confuse and overcome the other. It was at this point that Vanitas finally reached the bottom of the skyscraper on foot, where he remained stuck; unable to warp gravity, fly, or teleport long distances. With one final teleport (as if,) Aanthoni rematerialized where Noah didn't expect, and slammed him down through the glass wall with him from above. The two fell through an entire office floor sideways, Aanthoni Keeping Noah in front of him to use as a human shield to break through the cubicle walls first, but Noah grabbed Aanthoni by the shoulders and made them both intangible. They phased through the last few cubicle walls, passing though them harmlessly, and then the other side of the building, now outside again. Noah refocused his gravity toward the glass wall just in time to land on it, but didn't give Aanthoni the chance, his hands still on him, Noah completely froze Aanthoni's body covering it in blue and white frost making him still as a statue, and Noah didn't bother to readjust his opponent's gravity, letting him fall sideways out of reach for a moment, then back down to earth, Aanthoni then teleported (told you so,) and rematerialized In front, and a little bit above Noah, but Noah dropped down, swept his feet in a wide circle, casting of a fine line of sparks where he telekinetically sliced through the glass in the circle enclosing the space He and Aanthoni were standing in, he then jumped up, spread out his arms in a swan dive as the disc of glass fell out of the side of the building, separating Aanthoni and Noah on its two different sides. Noah went to shatter the glass disc with a sonic blast, but Aanthoni was quicker, grabbing it by the edge, turning it Horizontal to their now truly downward fall, and then whipping around his entire body to throw the disc, Noah twisted through the air, avoiding it in a matrix-style move (compounded by the long black cloak), but once behind him, the disc snapped into five rapidly moving discs, shrouded in dark light (yeah, it sounds like an oxymoron, but that's the best way to describe darkness) that continued on their path and attacked the Gherkin, and the top half of the building started to completely fall off. Noah and Aanthoni both landed on the street a few yards away from each other, just as the colossal structure fell crashing to the ground, demolishing buildings on its way down. Needless to say, people were running in the streets and panicking by now. Vanitas ran forward, trying to attack Noah but Noah stopped him, holding him in place motionless with a crush-grip of psychic energy, and then immediately assailed him with a ferocious combo of attacks with his swords, each motion flowing into the next perfectly as he slashed up, down, and across with one or both blades, teleporting to a new angle with each strike, and finally landing after one last strike, pivoting on the ground with the follow-through as he twirled his right-hand blade expertly and his black cloak flared outward with the spin for a moment. He pushed the weakened, cut-ridden Vanitas out of in front of him with psychic energy and was once again facing Aanthoni, who frisbied his black sword right at Noah. Noah countered, throwing both blades spiraling toward Aanthoni, but keeping his hands outstretched in front of him. Noah's swords morphed together into one as they hurled forward, and met Aanthoni's sword in the middle. Both blades continued to spin rapidly and grind against eachother, eachone trying to push the other toward the opponent, as they did they cast off continual showers of sparks from the friction, but Noah and Aanthoni kept psychically pushing on their respective blades. Aanthoni pushed the rapidly spinning metal storm toward Noah slightly, but lost his control as Noah forced it in the other direction toward him. Aanthoni swayed to the side slightly, causing the grinding blades to move with him and curve outward, and then around trying to flank Noah, but Noah pushed the other way moving them back to their path between them. Aanthoni gave a strong push right for Noah, but he swayed to the side, allowing the spinning metal to pass him; travel around his back in a wide ellipse, and then sling-shot back toward Aanthoni. Soon, under the influence of both psychics, the blades spinning against each other were moving in wide unpredictable orbits around the two of them, constantly turning direction and changing course. They ended up hitting the side of a building and slicing right along its wall, spreading frost along the edges of the gap as heat energy was absorbed, skyscrapers and buildings around them were demolished. The blades eventually started moving erratically, almost as if they were ricocheting off of imaginary and constantly shifting walls around them, they slammed into vehicles and buildings and pavement, indiscriminately breaking all of them. Eventually the two blades returned to the spot between Noah and Aanthoni, and Aanthoni's spinning sword seemed to erupt into a trail of darkness. The black serrated falchion seemed to have a meteor-like trail of dark energy shrouding it and trailing away from Noah's samurai sword as it spun and pushed forward on Noah's blade. Noah couldn't keep up, the added psychic energy was pushing the blades closer and closer to him, until his spiraling blade started casting off trails of light behind it, equal and opposite to that of Aanthoni. The spectacle was like watching; from close up, two comets compete in a judo match. They now seemed fixed to the space in between Noah and Aanthoni, only moving forward or backward as the two Space Lords tried to push against each other from a distance. Cracks opened up in the ground spreading out from the space where the two blades met, the conflicting forces stressing the fabric of space itself. There was a tremendous force emanating from the contact point of the black meteor and the white comet, Noah and Aanthoni both were having trouble keeping their feet firmly on the ground without sliding back, Noah's cloak was flapping back away from him at the waist as if in a strong breeze, and the same for Aanthoni's open leather jacket. Some tanks that had arrived were now firing at them along with some soldiers with machine guns, but the projectiles seemed to simply hit an invisible dome around them, only spreading ripples of clear light across its surface with no particular telekinetic interference on either Space Lord's part. Noah slowly pushed the Swords towards Aanthoni, but lost some ground as they ended up closer to him. Noah braced himself against the strong energy current acting against him, and pushed, slowly, evenly, steadily. Sure enough, the two conflicting blades slowly moved toward Aanthoni, and finally overtook him, knocking him back a few yards. Noah's long thin swords rematerialized in his hands, and he turned his focus now to the armed forces surrounding them, he let bullets and missiles phase through him, and when one exploded behind him, the fire didn't spread much but instead snaked into his hand, as he was pondering how exactly to make peace with the military, Vanitas, having recovered over time with cure magic, was once again upon him. As he attacked with combinations of attacks with the _Void Gear_, Noah expertly swung, twirled, and maneuvered his two blades, easily deflecting and keeping up with his attacks. Meanwhile, Aanthoni, who regained consciousness, telepathically invaded the minds of the soldiers working against them, and psychically stimulated the pain center of their brains all at once. For a few moments, Aanthoni enjoyed the howls and screams of their assailants, each one feeling every possible pain their body was capable of perceiving. As Noah heard the screams, he abandoned Vanitas and teleported to Aanthoni's side, only to immediately have a blow deflected by his sword. Aanthoni psychically manipulated air particles around Noah, causing an invisible spherical vacuum around him. Noah gasped for breath unable to move, it wasn't safe to teleport into or out of a vacuum, he could end up a splattered mess of atoms wherever he wanted to land. Any form of energy he tried to throw out at Aanthoni didn't work, sound needed to cause waves of compressed air, electricity needed a medium to pass the electrons along, fire needed oxygen and a fuel, heat needed particles to vibrate. Aanthoni cackled as the screams continued

"SUFFER!" he declared, as blue streaks of electricity jumped from his body and connected to tanks, and people. With a wave of one hand, three tanks shot up into the air, and then fell back down, each one exploding. Aanthoni held out his hand to absorb the fiery explosions which obediently funneled through the air into his body. He then planted a telepathic emotion in the minds of several soldiers, an emotion of extreme manic depression, and allowed them to shoot themselves. It finally occurred to Noah, light, the only energy that can travel through a vacuum, and of course, the only kind Aanthoni had trouble with. Noah struggled to move his hand but when he did, rays of radiant white light shone from his palm, and nearly fried Aanthoni. He was caught off guard and accidentally let go of the vacuum, teleporting to the middle of the clearing between tanks and officers, and black vans and whatnot. He immeaditley started absorbing energy as fast as he could, a quick recovery while getting back on the offensive. The air itself dropped to absolute zero and became solid, the ice slowly spreading from Aanthoni as everything in the area froze. Soon, the intersection in the street was completely encased in a big block of frozen atmosphere. Aanthoni phased up through the top of the small glacier, and with his newfound energy, let out a telekinetic shockwave that bisected nearby buildings and cut through them, but the wave kept moving destroying everything in its path until it dissipated at the edges of London, Having successfully leveled the skyline. He turned to face Noah, communicated telepathically in the same instant that he dematerialized with Vanitas.

_I've made my choice, I am going to raze this world and every other one I can find before putting an end to this universe's misery, either join me, or get out of my way._ Noah stood up and teleported to the top of the humongous ice cube, now giving off white mist as it reheated back into gases, skipping the liquid phase. Noah looked around and saw fires just starting from the city almost in ruins, sirens of ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks could be heard everywhere in the distance, especially if your ears were hypersensitive to sonic energy. As the sun started to rise, Noah felt conflicted, not knowing whether to help the city, or get out of dodge before he was arrested. Although he felt tremendously guilty afterward, he realized that saving London would take a while, too long. And it would get in the way of the mission he had already committed himself too, restoring the Keyblade wielders. Noah flickered out of existence, teleporting back to the middle of the night in Twilight Town.

As Noah walked up to his front door, he was greeted by a neighbor.

"What are you doing out so late, kiddo?" A woman's voice asked. Noah turned to see a woman in her mid thirties on his front lawn.

"That's sort of, a long story. And don't call me kiddo," he answered. _I'm older than you are._ Nico came out the front door at this point to greet Noah.

"Welcome back," he said, before noticing the neighbor.

"Thanks," Noah replied quietly to Nico, "And what are you doing this late too?" he asked to the woman.

"I jog at nighttime; it's much more peaceful, especially when I can't get to sleep. My name's Sally, you must be the neighbors, I've always wanted to meet the people who lived in this house," she said. A quick telepathic scan of Sally's mind revealed to Noah that she was a mild insomniac.

"We only just recently moved in, this afternoon in fact," explained Noah, "it's me, Nico here, and my girlfriend River." He continued. Nico's interest was caught again. Girlfriend? So he does know about this. With someone as naive as Noah is, Nico wouldn't have been surprised if Noah was the last one to know that he was in a relationship.

"What about parents?" Sally Asked.

"Well, that's sort of a long story; we're one of the few teenagers in the universe that actually can responsibly take care of ourselves. Speaking of which," Noah addressed Nico, "we have school tomorrow, and we shouldn't be up this late."

"Speaking of school, I should probably get back to my son before sunrise, It was nice meeting you! I hope you enjoy the neighborhood," she said as she started to walk off.

"Thanks, nice meeting you too!" said Nico

"We'll have to have you over for dinner sometime, bring your family!" Invited Noah.

"Will do, that'd be nice, see you around." She finished as she walked through the door of the house next to Noah's.

"She seems nice," Said Nico.

"What are you still doing up?" asked Noah as the two of them walked inside. "It's," Noah paused, looking up at the sky, "one thirty-seven in the morning!" he finished.

"You have got to be kidding, the stars? Don't tell me you can tell time by looking at the stars," said Nico as he closed the door behind them.

"Don't be ridiculous, of course I can't tell time JUST from the stars,… I also have to know what day of the year it is."

When Noah got to his room, River was already asleep. He pointed a finger, and as it moved upward he sliced the king-sized bed in two, and with a touch each one morphed into a complete one-person bed, the empty one of which, he noiselessly slid across the room and laid down in. The very second Noah closed his eyes, River opened hers, she looked across the room to the least intrusive boyfriend in the universe and proceeded to roll them. She got up and pushed her bed, slightly less noiselessly, over to Noah's so that the sides were touching. Noah was already fast asleep, his normally vast vortex of inner energy somewhat depleted after his fight with Aanthoni, but nevertheless River laid down next to him, closed her eyes, and counted three million, forty eight thousand, five hundred and sixty two sheep before falling asleep two seconds later.

Nico, River, and Noah got about four hours of sleep, before waking up at 6. In the morning, which was still pitch black outside, River made herself a smoothie out of an apple, some milk, some fried bacon, a granola bar, a banana, a guava flavored yogurt, a scrambled egg, a potato, a bit of cereal, and a dandelion. Nico's sweet tooth got the better of him; he had a sugar loaded breakfast cereal with orange juice, and Noah had three cups of coffee, five five-hour-energy drinks, and rummaged through the cupboard looking for whatever had the most calories, which he then took out. It shriveled up and turned black and brown in his hand and he threw it in the garbage, having sucked it dry of chemical energy. River drank her smoothie through a network of bendy straws, and calculated something about it on a graph on a napkin between sips for fun.

Sora heard his name being called, but vaguely, through a muffling veil of drowsiness.

_The human brain was not intended to function this early….._ He thought as he tried to rouse himself to his mother waking him up like she did every school morning. Finally his senses began to light up in his body one by one. Hearing came.

"Sora! Sora! Wake up!" she sounded a little irritated. Sora shuffled around and sat up, opening his eyes to look at his mom. He yawned,

"Goo'rorning' m'm"

"Sora, would you care to explain to me why you're sleeping on the couch?"

"Because, first day of school today. Couldn't stay up all night, need to get rest," he said incoherently. His head plopped down on the pillow again. "Still need to get rest…" he added.

"And what exactly is wrong with your bed?" His mother inquired.

"Nothing, I hope," he answered, still not able to connect the dots as he got up slowly off the couch.

"THEN, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, WHY AREN'T YOU SLEEPING IN IT?"

"Oh! Right, Roxas is using it."

"Roxas is using your bed?"

"Yeah."

"_Why_ is Roxas using your bed?"

"Because he has school today too," said Sora simply, as he started to wander to the stairs.

"And what's wrong with Roxas' bed!"

"It's at his house."

"So?"

"Mom, it's his dad, he was going berserk yesterday, so I let him come over here for the night," Sora explained calmly.

"Oh,….well,….. In the future, I would appreciate it if you let me know,….. did you tell his fater?"

"Hahaha,…no…" Said Sora.

"Sora, you can't just _do_ things like that!"

"Mom, please don't freak out, it was hard enough to get him to come over as it is, I don't want him to feel, unwelcome," explained Sora, now halfway up the stairs. His mom said something else, but Sora didn't hear, he would catch it later. Sora knocked on his bedroom door, Roxas opened it from the inside, letting him in.

"Mom's home," said Sora. "we need to get ready for school, I'm just going to grab some clothes, I figure we're taking the bus," explained Sora, as he walked over to his dresser and rummaged through for an outfit. "You can use some of my clothes, we're the same size," offered Sora.

"How do you know?" asked Roxas. Sora froze,

"I, uh,….kind of,…. _Borrowed_ your old organization cloak for a cosplay thing a few months ago,….itfitperfectlyIgottagogoodbye," said Sora, dashing out of his room.


	5. The First Day of School

Chapter four: The first day of school

Sora came down to the kitchen, dressed and clean, to find Roxas wearing one of his shirts and a pair of his shorts, which fit perfectly. He and Sora's mother were both eating a bowl of cereal, with the morning news on in the background.

"Hey, mom, you seen my backback?"

"Yes, dear, it was on the cat," his mother quoted, with a rather bad British accent. Roxas shot a quizzical look at Sora and opened his mouth to say _you don't have a cat_, but Sora finished his sentence for him

"We talk in movie quotes sometimes," he explained. Roxas seemed to have a satisfied expression, so Sora looked around to his mother, "so,…..?"

"I think I saw it in the living room." She answered. Sora looked, and found it in the corner of the living room, from the kitchen he could hear his mother exlaim,

"Oh my god,….."

"What's wrong?" Sora shouted from the living room.

"London was attacked!" she called back as Sora made his way to the kitchen.

"Honestly, mom, your accent isn't _that _bad."

"Come look!" Sora obliged, on the screen of the small TV in the kitchen, a news organization was showing footage of Big Ben crumbling in the middle of the night.

"What?" Sora didn't know what to say, he, Roxas, and his mother were all flabbergasted. Sora poked his head back into the living room and looked over it thoroughly, there was definitely neither a decorated tree nor wrapped gifts.

"But it's not Christmas! Are you sure they attacked?"

"Of course I'm sure! They say it happened last night! But it wasn't aliens this time, they're saying it was mutants." She explained. Sora leaned in closer to the small TV, listening to the broadcast.

"_And this footage was taken just a few hours ago when the alleged mutant, or mutants, froze an entire army section, that's right folks, what you're seeing on your screen now is solid ice, these pictures were taken of the city after the attack, as you can see, all the buildings are completely leveled it's like someone took some giant scythe to the city of London. We are being told that the president intends to issue a statement today in public addressing whether or not America intends to aid in the relief efforts. The British prime minister issued a statement earlier this morning…."_ The newscaster's voice droned on with all the same usual things they heard every year when London was attacked by aliens on Christmas. The most recent Christmas crisis had involved everyone transforming into the former prime minister for a short period of time, followed by a gigantic orange planet almost knocking earth out of its orbit. Sora was glad they were only memories, but still, he felt like he had experienced them.

"_up next, is mutant aggression on the rise? Is the human race heading towards a cross-species war? All that and-" _ the newscaster was cut off by eyes only. Eyes only seemed to be some sort of crusading journalist, he started broadcasting a few months ago and ever since then has been exposing all kinds of corruption, and other hidden truths. Nobody knew who he was, his broadcasts only showed his eyes, an extreme close-up with the top and the bottom of his face were always blocked by an information bar of some sort. And the trick seemed to work, in all the time he's been broadcasting, all the toes he's stepped on in pursuit of truth an ideals, nobody's ever found out who he is. And his messages always started the same way. "_Do not attempt to adjust your TV set. This is a streaming freedom video from the eyes only informant. It cannot be stopped, it cannot be traced, and it is the only free voice left in this country. The cable hack will last exactly sixty seconds. I'm sure you're all aware of the recent attack on the city of London, and wouldn't it be convenient if we could simply blame it on all mutants as if they were terrorists…."_ As eyes only continued his exactly one minute monologue, Sora knew what the basic gist was from the start. He sighed.

"Is he on every channel?" he asked hopefully.

"Is he ever not?" responded Roxas.

"Let me know when it's over. I'm gonna go pack my bag," he said leaving.

"NO YOU WON'T!" exclaimed Sora's mother. "You think I'm letting you go to school on a day like this? No! I'm keeping the two of you safe here with me! You're not going to school today!"

"But, it's the first day! And it's not like our school is a major target or anything!" Sora argued

"No! you have the flu today. And so do you, Roxas. You're both highly contagious and you can't go to school."

"Mom, I'm fine."

"NOT TODAY YOU'RE NOT! DID YOU SEE WHAT THEY DID TO THAT CITY! Besides, if the principal has a problem with it, I'll just give him a note from Dr. Andrew Jackson."

"Unless we've been analyzed by Dr. Benjamin Franklin and his five twin brothers, I don't think the school is going to care," Added Roxas.

"Mom, you know nothing is going to happen, and if it were any other day, I'd be the one trying to fool _you_ into thinking I was sick, but today, it's the first day. If we miss today it only goes downhill from here," Sora tried to calm his mother down, eventually she agreed to let them go, provided that if anything bad did happen, they would come straight home right away. As the two boys were walking out the door to the bus, Sora's mother stopped Roxas.

"If that father of yours gives you anymore trouble, you don't hesitate to tell someone alright? If you ever need to stay here again, you're welcome to do so," she said.

"Uhhh, thanks," said Roxas, and turned to catch up with Sora. As Sora's mother watched the two boys leaving, she realized,… only one of them had a backpack. Roxas' stuff was still at his house. Her eyes widened as she watched the two of them get on the bus. Roxas saw his brother and sat down next to him. Sora, a little disappointed, sat down with Riku further back

"Hey, Wind." Said Roxas as he sat down. Roxas and Sora were the only ones that ever called Ventus wind, to everyone else, he was Ventus or Ven. Likewise, Ventus and Roxas were the only ones that Sora let call him "Sky"

"Hey, so where were you all night?" Asked Ventus.

"Staying at Sora's, You?" Replied Roxas.

"oooohhhh, how did things go at Sky's house?" Teased Ventus playfully, Roxas hadn't told him that he had a crush on Sora, Ventus just sort of worked it out on his own. Roxas still refused to confirm definitely that his suspicions were true, but Ven didn't need much confirmation.

"oh, shut up," Roxas teased back, lying back in the seat with his hands beind his head like Sora frequently did. That's when Ven noticed it.

"Uh, Roxas,…. Where's your stuff?" Roxas sat upright, no longer relaxed.

"Ahh!, must have left It at home. Great, first day of school and I forget my stuff. Just my luck," Said Roxas.

"What are you gonna do?" Ven asked.

"… I don't know, maybe I can teleport home, grab it, and get back before first class starts,"

"Dad's not gonna be happy when he finds you," warned Ventus.

"You mean _if _he finds me," corrected Roxas. Ventus paused for a moment,

"If,… If is good," he commented. The bus stopped again and picked up Nico, River, and Noah.

Earlier that day, while the three off them were having breakfast, and River was calculating breakfast, Nico spoke to Noah.

"How did your little meeting with Aanthoni go?" he asked as Noah downed his third energy shot. He placed the empty bottle next to the other two.

"guess," he said.

"Bad?"

"Mild understatement. We destroyed London. Well _he_ did, I only had a part in the clock tower and the pinecone one, and some other skyscrapers, but just three or four."

"umm, don't you think some people might notice that?"

"Oh, people did. I think it's on the news. Eyes Only should be talking about it too, oh, I've told you about Eyes Only, right?" Nico nodded. "Good, anyway, I don't think anyone saw our faces, or really any other part of us for that matter," recounted Noah.

"did you find out what he did to me?" asked Nico hopefully

"No, he wasn't exactly in a divulgeetory mood, if you know what I mean."

"Divulgeetory isn't a word," commented River, whose head was laying on the table, looking closely through her glass.

"You going to come out of the water anytime soon? Join us up here on dry land?"

"Noooo, I like it down here," said River, not peeking up from behind her glass, "I will return to the surface for air in approximately five hours," she said.

"We're going to have to catch the bus," Said Noah.

"Does it have a periscope?"

As the three of them waited at the bus stop, Noah was still a little tired, and trying to absorb energy.

"Noah, shadow," reminded Nico. Noah looked down and saw that Nico's and River's shadows were parallel to one of his own; they were parallel to one because each of them had only one, while Noah had six. He was absorbing energy in the form of light.

"Nobody's going to notice," defended Noah.

"I did," said Nico.

"Me too," said River, who seemed to be fixated on a tree nowhere near Noah's shadows.

"Nobody who's not a Hades child or a prodigy is going to notice," defended Noah, but he withdrew his extra shadows anyway.

As they got on the bus, Nico sat across the aisle from Noah and River. The three of them quickly overheard the conversation going on behind them. A senior seemed to be taking to a friend of his, the one doing the taking was wearing a cloth hat and a long white coat. The person he was talking to was very large, in the muscular sense. He had a tan complexion, square features, and short black hair.

"So, did you hear mutants attacked London? I can't believe the government isn't doing anything about this. They should just round 'em all up and get rid of 'em if you ask me," he said.

"Yeah, great idea, that way plenty of innocent people get persecuted while the resources are used up on them instead of the ones that are actually dangerous, brilliant," commented Nico.

"Did I ask you?" asked the boy.

"No, but if it turns out he's a mutant, I would think your attitude toward him might change a little," Said Noah.

"This is none of your business, blondie," Seifer retorted.

"you're talking to my friend, which makes it my business," said Noah, turning around in the seat. He snatched the hat off of Seifer's head, "And you're not exactly in a position to go using that as a derogatory term," he added.

"HEY! That's like, Seifer's hat! Y'no?" said the brawly friend.

"Un-cool," added a girl with silver hair sitting across from them. Noah returned the hat, which was quickly restored to its head. This was when River chimed in.

"They say you shouldn't throw rocks if you live in a glass house, they say you shouldn't be a hypocrite, they say the rocks might get thrown back at you and break your house, we have to get him out before the shards slice him to ribbons. Why throw rocks at all? Why don't they say 'don't throw rocks' why does the real-estate matter? Whose property is it? Whose isn't it? Why buy a glass house at all, just live outside with trees and leaves. Trees and leaves don't shatter, don't break apart, or do they?"

"Random," commented the silver-haired girl.

"Is your girlfriend talking at me?" Seifer Demanded

"Incorrect preposition," River continued, "I would hardly call this talking."

"It was only two mutants anyway, that destroyed London. It's not like they're all ganging up on humanity," added Nico.

"Oh yeah? And how do _you_ know that?" asked Seifer.

"Cornered," came the silver-haired girl again. This time River read her mind and found out her name was 'Fuu.'

"Because Noah was one of them," River answered simply. Seifer laughed.

"If Noah's a dangerous mutant, then I'm Mickey Mouse!" Seifer Retorted.

"Nice to see you again, your majesty!" Shouted Sora from a few seats up. This got a few confused looks,

"Non-sequitur," commented Fuu. Noah turned to look at her.

"Do you ever use more than one and a half words at a time?" he asked sincerely.

"Never," was her reply.

The First thing Roxas did when he got to school was go to the bathroom. Well, not really. He actually stepped into a stall, locked it, teleported to his room, grabbed his backpack, teleported back to the stall, and left. Teleporting isn't something most of the students at the school can do, even the ones that _are_ mutants. The rest of the school day went by without a hitch for Roxas. Nico, Noah, and River all found that, although they weren't always in the same classes as each other, there was always at least one person in each of their classes that was on the top of the clock tower the other day, or Ventus and Vanitas, who seemed to have all the same classes as each other as observed by Noah.

The highlight of Nico's school day was learning how not to make a friend. He was sitting in English class doing not much of anything when an extremely goth girl walked in. she had short black hair, kept down in front of her eyes. She was wearing a black sweater, even though it hadn't even begun to get chilly yet, black jeans, even black gloves. Not thick gloves that would restrict her movement in anyway, they seemed thin enough to allow her to function as if she weren't even wearing them. She looked about as old as nico, probably in the same grade, and Nico could see he had a dim life aura. Not a dark one, just a dim one, not very much energy of either kind. She wore black lipstick too, and an excessive amount of eye shadow.

"I think I left something in this class," she stated flatly to the teacher.

"Perhaps your soul?" Nico muttered to himself under his breath. She turned to look at him anyway.

"That's funny," she said flatly.

"I think you left your binder over there," The teacher pointed her in the direction of her misplaced goods.

Later on, Nico had lunch. He got himself some food, paid for with his special wallet. You see, Nico's father, Hades, He's not just the god of death, he's also the god of wealth. One day, for Nico's birthday, Hades gave him the Hoodie Nico always wears to this day, and the wallet that always has ten dollars in it no matter how many times you pay for things. The Hoodie happened to have void pockets, that is, pockets with a void portal pressed to the inner lining so that you could store nearly infinite amounts of objects in them. Nico always carried around the essentials: a tent, his stygian Iron sword, a camera, a phone that Noah had modified for Nico to be able to use (without attracting every Greek monster in the city) by coating the SIM card in celestial bronze, some Ambrosia, a psychic-command sonic screwdriver that Tyson had built for him (basically a Swiss army knife, and so much more…) some firewood, a couple cheap protective amulets, and a panacea. Noah had made the Panacea in an emergency once, he mixed regenerative blood from his father into Nico's canteen of Nectar, a few drops of that could cure almost anything the universe could throw at you.

Anyway, Nico had his lunch tray, as he walked toward Noah and River's table he saw them talking to each other, he couldn't help but wonder what they were talking about. He would find out later that River thought Noah was working himself to hard, and would be taking him out to dinner to help him relax that night. On his way to his friend's table, he heard someone call his name. He turned and saw the girl he had referred to as soul-less earlier sitting with a few other kids sporting the Goth/emo look.

"Come here," invited the goth girl flatly. Nico hesitantly walked over to the table. There were two other students there, a boy who was probably a senior. He had long grey hair combed down in a…. in a _something_ over his right eye. He was wearing a purple t-shirt, but had several black-and-white rings. He had his nose in a small pocket-sized book which he was holding with one hand. The other kid was a girl, probably a freshman. She had light brown hair and glasses, but dressed totally in black and red and wore plenty of punk jewelry.

"Sit down." The girl with the black hair still refused to acknowledge and presence of emotion in her voice.

"This is the kid?" asked the other girl.

"Of course he is," said the Boy. He looked up from his book and sniffed the air. "your reputation precedes you, Mr. DiAngelo. I've heard a great deal about you through my,… shall we say,… employment?" he didn't speak much like a goth kid. More like a pompous nerd/geek.

"Trust me, just nod when he stops for breath," suguested the other girl. "I'm Reggie, this is Z, and you've already met Poppet." Nico sat down slowly.

"Those are some odd names," he commented. Reggie spoke.

"Well Z is just short for his long name, which he refuses to tell anyone. And, well, Poppet, nobody knows what her real name is either. Nobody's ever called her by it, and she never bothers to correct anybody."

"Don't people ask what her real name is?"

"She keeps saying she can't have a name," Explained Reggie. Nico looked again at the girl with the dim life force. He wondered if it was because she was terminally ill, normally, people as young as her don't die of old age, and death by accident or murder wouldn't be affecting her life force early.

"Look, I'm sorry if what I said earlier offended you, I wasn't really thinking—"

"Followed an impulse?" asked Z, peeking up from his book again.

"What are you reading?" Nico asked.

"_Twilight_" he answered with a sarcastic smile, and tone, "I take it you're not big on reading?" he asked.

"No," responded Nico, "not really,… how did you know?"

"Don't mind me, please continue," Z stuck his nose back in the book. Nico turned back to Poppet.

"Well, anyway, I didn't mean to insult you, your soul actually isn't entirely in bad shape, all of you actually,"

"What do you mean?" Reggie Asked. Nico realized he had begun talking about seeing people's souls. He looked over at Noah and River again, they were still talking.

"Um, well, I can sort of see people's souls, I gotta go now bye," He started to get up trying to get away before this got out of hand.

"Oh, so are you like one of those mutants?" asked Reggie.

"Yeah, you could sort of say that—" said Nico, as he started to walk away.

"Firstly, I believe they prefer the term 'genetically empowered' and furthermore, you could also say he's a half-blood" added Z. Nico stopped and turned around to look at him. He was still reading, but he put the book down after a moment. "Oh, come now, wake up and smell the perfume, look at you! You go around speaking of your ability to see people's hearts, your micro expressions in regard to literature indicate your dislike for the subject- most likely due to dyslexia, further your eye movement and minor muscle twitches are typical to those of ADHD patients, your facial structure and physique suggest a hint of Greek ethnicity in your heritage, and frankly, you _smell_," Z sniffed the air. "Ozone, O3, typical of oxygen-deprived cells, you've been dead before, not entirely uncommon in and of itself, people are resuscitated on an hourly basis worldwide, but not all of them happen to have the psychological disorders of a demigod nor the enzymes and pheromones indicative of abnormal blood chemistry; quite literally a '_half – blood_' not to mention traces of methane and other simplified stable organic compounds common among the products of a decomposition reaction" he finished. Nico looked worriedly at Reggie and Poppet, Reggie nodded, now that Z stopped for breath. Poppet was probably astro-projecting for all she moved. Z looked at their blank expressions and went back to his book,

"Troglodytes," he whispered under his breath.

"Last I checked only monsters could smell half-bloods," said Nico, beginning to worry that Z might morph into a dracne or something.

"In a way, aren't we all the real monsters? Oh, never mind that. That's a debate for another day. Perhaps a day when you're a little more prepared for some verbal-sparring." Nico Wandered off toward Noah's table. He sat down.

"Made some new friends?" asked Noah.

"Not entirely sure, what are you two up to?"

"Noah works to hard," said River, "Works to long, brain is like a light bulb, runs on electricity, use it to long it burns out. He said himself, think too much and your head will explode, I'm taking him on a date."

"Oh, that's nice. I hope you two enjoy yourseves… wait, when did Noah say that?"

"Nineteen forty two" answered River. Noah suddenly looked up at her face rather than down at his equations written in Gallifreyen,

"How can you possibly know that?" he asked.

"Also, I like steak," River added.

The highlight of Noah's school day was leaning how not to catch a bad guy. It happened during one of the passing periods. The school bell rang, its harsh apathetic tone signaling students everywhere that they were free for the next 24 hours from the chains of whatever boring class they were in, and could proceed to the shackles of the next. Noah walked out into the hallway, like a city street, it was crowded with bodies all going about their business trying to get to the next class, except one. One body, standing about eight feet away from Noah, just stood there, staring at him through the crowd. Noah saw this body and froze up for a moment, staring back, wondering what would happen next. Everyone seemed to simply be unaware of the unmoving figure in the middle of the hallway. Nobody bumped into him, nobody asked him to move along, everyone just walked past him as if the immediate space around him didn't exist. Aanthoni's voice spoke in Noah's mind as he started to move.

_You going to chase me, or what?_ Noah always kept his guard up telepathically, but he always did allow for speech messages to penetrate his mind in case someone had to contact him. Just as Aanthoni transmitted the thought to Noah's mind, he reached out, and brushed his fingers on the arm of a passing girl. Noah felt his stomach to a back flip as he realized what was happening. Aanthoni casually turned around and started walking with the crowd, away from Noah. Noah looked at the girl Aanthoni had touched, and committed her features to memory as he started to chase after his rival. Aanthoni rounded a corner, a few minutes later, Noah did too. He looked over the crowd, trying to pick out the face in the mass of moving students, he saw her. Aanthoni turned her head around to shoot a quick glance at Noah, he had shape-shifted to a copy of the girl he got a genetic imprint off of. Her eyes flashed red for a quick moment, as she turned around and started walking again.

"EXCUSE ME! PARDON ME!" Noah demanded passage through the crowd as politely as he could, never let it be said that he let his manners slip for _anything_. Annthoni tapped the shoulder of one kid going in the opposite direction, Noah memorized his face. She high-fived a friend of the girl she copied, Noah memorized her too. Aanthoni rounded another corner; Noah struggled through the crowd, turned the same corner, and started scanning the crowd. The words of his father talking to a mutant-hunter rang in his ears

"_You chased a shape shifter, you don't get it do you? You don't _chase_ a _shape shifter_,"_

Noah couldn't find either of the new faces in the crowd; he started to panic, had he lost him? Her? Whatever it was at the moment? He would have slapped his forehead if he had the time when he saw Aanthoni hadn't changed form at all that time, he saw the girl heading into a bathroom. He rushed forward, the crowd starting to thin out as people got to their classes, he was just about to burst through the door when a teacher on hall-duty stopped him.

"Excuse me sir!" Noah stopped as the teacher grabbed his arm. There were probably a million ways Noah could have escaped, but he wasn't going to start a problem for no reason.

"No, listen, there's someone in there that I really need to find!" Noah tried explaining, leaving out the part about both of them being 'genetically empowered' and the fate of the universe depending on it. A girl walked out of the girl's bathroom. It wasn't the one Aanthoni walked in as, but soon another girl walked out and went the other way. Noah had no way of knowing if either of them was his target, or which one, but he soon found out; neither.

"_Let go of his arm,_" commanded Aanthoni, back in his old voice and old body, fading into visibility behind Noah. The bell rang. They were officially late for class. Aanthoni's voice was layered with another tone, a deeper sound that vibrated off of Aanthoni's voice; a telepathic command. The teacher's hand dropped off Noah's arm to her side, a blank expression on her face, Aanthoni continued, "_And when you go to sleep tonight, your sheets will constrict you, suck the life out of you, smother and suffocate you_," as odd as this might sound, the illusion of not being able to breathe would actually cause asphyxiation in the body through the same principal as hysteria, or auto-suggestion.

"_Forget that!"_ commanded Noah, with the same undertone in his voice, "_you will be absolutely fine tonight!_"

"_He's right; you'll suffer a heart attack at the end of the next class"_

"_No, you won't!"_ Noah rushed to cancel out Aanthoni's mind control.

"_Oh, right, it will be at noon"_

"_You won't have a heart attack!"_

"_Instead, you'll have an aneurism"_ aneurisms could be created by the subconscious as well.

"_Your body will be fine!"_

"_At the moment the school collapses on it in two minutes,"_

"_The school won't collapse, don't obey any more commands from him!"_ Noah regretted the words as soon as they came out, Aanthoni's trap worked,

"_Don't ignore any further commands from him, and don't die painfully sometime in the next minute,"_ Aanthoni turned and started walking away casually, as he did, he addressed Noah "Good luck with that one, given you can't influence her anymore, you could probably figure it out, but which is more important? Her life, or my capture?" Aanthoni walked away, already knowing the answer. The teacher simply stood there with a blank expression, she hadn't snapped out of zombie-mode yet. Noah carefully examined Aanthoni's exact phrasing in his memory,

_He used the word "Him" would shape shifting into a girl let me control her? No, I'd have to change my gender identity for that. I can't pull the opposites trick like he did, he's using ignorance, not defiance, hold on, maybe,…_

Noah looked around, there was a late student walking to class nearby. Noah invaded her mind and poured psychic energy into her. Using his new psychic puppet, he forced the student to mind-control the teacher

"_What room is the source of your previous command in?_" Noah used his powers to make a hologram map of the school in front of the dazed teacher, she subconsciously pointed to a room. Noah committed the number to memory. Noah had taken care of finding Aanthoni, now all he had to do was fix the teacher's mind, "_Disregard all telepathic instructions received previous to this one."_ Noah released his control over the teacher, and then pulled his mind out of the student back into his own head. Both were a bit dazed. Noah tried to teleport, but an odd shock ran down his entire body, it felt like every fiber of his being was being scrambled. He hadn't moved an inch, he figured Aanthoni was probably doing something to prevent teleportation to him; Noah would have to do it the old-fashioned way. He started absorbing every photon of light that hit his body and emitting the exact same pattern on the opposite side, basically, he was invisible. He ran right for the room the teacher had told him, literally a beeline to the stairs, fazing through anything that got in his way. Up the stairs, then straight to the destination room, running invisibly through numerous classrooms and passing right through walls without leaving so much as a mark. Finally he reached the empty class he was going for, key word: empty. Aanthoni wasn't there. Noah became visible and looked around, there was a silvery-metal mine-like object sitting on the windowsill emitting a high-pitched frequency. The frequency was too high for even dogs to hear, but Noah recognized it as the pitch that would resonate with Rhondium particles, just like a voice can shatter glass, and prevent teleportation. Noah ran to the window and picked up the gadget, turning it off. He wondered how Aanthoni could have separated his mind from his body and put it in this room, after all, the teacher was indicating the presence of his mind, with no possibility of inaccuracy. As Noah looked up from the device, he saw Aanthoni out the window. Not right out the window, but in another room. The way the school was constructed, some of the rooms have that face a sort of empty courtyard in the middle, with hallways all around it. Through the window and across the courtyard, behind the window of another class, Aanthoni was standing, looking right at him. Noah used his shapeshifting to dialate his pupils. His vision zoomed in on Aanthoni's face, trying to get a better look at him. Aanthoni removed his large dark sunglasses and revealed his blood-red eyes. The gesture brought Noah's attention to them; they had been switched. Aanthoni had physically taken his eyeballs out and replaced them in the opposite socket; he was seeing a mirror-image of the world. And Noah was in the classroom exactly opposite Aanthoni's: the reflection. Aanthoni teleported, Noah lost him, but he got the message. Noah knew Aanthoni wasn't actually trying to kill a random teacher, he was taunting him.

Noah teleported to the class he was supposed to be in and erased the occurrence from their memories.


End file.
